IRS claims it has LOST two years' worth of emails from former official Lerner

[Wilikon]

[...]
“The United States was founded on the belief government is subservient and accountable to the people.  Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to follow laws the Obama administration refuses to follow themselves,” said Stockman.  “Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama administration uses.”


1.         The dog ate my tax receipts
2.         Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3.         Traded documents for five terrorists
4.         Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5.         Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6.         Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7.         Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8.         Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9.         Was short on toilet paper while camping
10.       At this point, what difference does it make?


http://stockman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/stockman-bill-allows-taxpayers-to-use-same-lame-excuses-as-irs

[Wilikon]

Lerner’s Hard Drive Mysteriously “Crashed” 10 Days After House GOP Began Investigation…

Lois Lerner’s emails are lost, and they need finding. In the meantime, their very disappearance tells us that Congress is sniffing down the right trail.

A year into congressional investigations of IRS targeting, we know two things beyond a doubt. We know from the public record that starting in 2010 the most powerful leaders of the Democratic Party—President Obama, Senate chairmen, House Democrats—ran a ceaseless campaign pressuring the IRS to silence conservative groups. We also know from internal IRS emails that Ms. Lerner, the former head of exempt organizations, was at the epicenter of an agency effort to silence those very groups, in the precise same time frame.

What we don’t know is the interaction between the two. The IRS’s deliberate withholding for a year of Lerner emails allowed the press and liberals to crow that there was no “there” there—zero evidence of Lerner collusion with anybody in the Democratic Party. At the very worst, went the explanation, Ms. Lerner and her IRS pals were zealous bureaucrats, primed to crack down on campaign money, and therefore eager to interpret the Democratic campaign as an order to act. […]

As to Ms. Lerner’s behavior, consider that House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp first sent a letter asking if the IRS was engaged in targeting in June, 2011. Ms. Lerner denied it. She engineered a plant in an audience at a tax conference in May 2013 to drop the bombshell news about targeting (maybe hoping nobody would notice?). She has subsequently asserted a Fifth Amendment right to silence in front of the only people actually investigating the affair, Congress. Now we learn that her hard drive supposedly defied modernity and suffered total annihilation about 10 days after the Camp letter arrived.

Is there something in those lost emails? The fact that they are “lost” at all probably answers that question.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-about-those-missing-emails-1403220814

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Her hard drive and those of 6 others directly involved.. Died.
Not a smidgen of corruption

[Wilikon]

Is that a smoking gun I smell? It turns out the IRS contracted with a company that provides email backup services starting in 2005. This first came to light in the Twitter feed of moregenr[ed. - researcher for the dearly departed Verum Serum blog], who noticed that the IRS appears on the client list of email archiving service provider Sonasoft.

This was was picked up by Peter Suderman of Reason, who writes:

The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005,according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for “automatic data processing services.” Sonasoft’s motto is “email archiving done right,” and the companylists the IRS as a customer.

In 2009, Sonasoft even sent out a Tweet advertising its work for the IRS.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/06/irs_contracted_with_email_archiving_company_in_2005.html

http://www.sonasoft.com/company/customers/

[Wilikon]

Here is the US Treasury contract with Sonasoft from 2000 to 2012.

http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?reptype=r&database=fpds&unique_transaction_id=6b1e1ac07603a819d7c7d1c22d9eea24&detail=3&datype=T&sortp=i

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see if they have "crashed" their back up too.... Only on those lerner + 6 others of course 

[InwardContour]

Anytime that a hard drive fails in any major corporation (I assume that the government would work the same way in this regard) someone will make an attempt to recover data on the hard drive, it is common for at least some data to be recovered.

From news reports it appears that her Microsoft outlook email account would only keep emails in a user's inbox for a certain amount of time (6 months would be the likely time-frame) after which they would be automatically deleted. If an employee wanted/needed to keep an email for a longer time then they would move them to a personal folder (aka .pst folder/file).

It is common to have compliance requirements to move emails to an archive inbox when they are no longer needed. The "archive inbox" would have emails saved and archived and then deleted from the inbox on a daily basis. This is to be done manually by employees on a periodic basis. The emails that are archived are still accessible if it turns out they will be needed at a later point, the employee can contact the person who has access to the archives with a request and the subject email would be provided. It would generally be against policy to house emails on your computer after the time you no longer need access to an email on a day to day basis.

The answer to the question of would it be possible that these email were really lost would be yes that would be possible. With that being said it would be undeniable that Lerner violated policy by not having her emails sent to the archives for two years. Is this something that she could go to jail for, I am not sure. Is this something she could go to jail for considering that the information contained in the emails could potentially contain information about possible crimes, the chances of jail time are considerably higher. Should she go to jail for this, most likely yes, unless she can provide information that shows she was following direction from someone above her, however even in this situation she should only receive a reduced jail sentence as opposed to no jail at all.

[Wilikon]

Anytime that a hard drive fails in any major corporation (I assume that the government would work the same way in this regard) someone will make an attempt to recover data on the hard drive, it is common for at least some data to be recovered.

From news reports it appears that her Microsoft outlook email account would only keep emails in a user's inbox for a certain amount of time (6 months would be the likely time-frame) after which they would be automatically deleted. If an employee wanted/needed to keep an email for a longer time then they would move them to a personal folder (aka .pst folder/file).

It is common to have compliance requirements to move emails to an archive inbox when they are no longer needed. The "archive inbox" would have emails saved and archived and then deleted from the inbox on a daily basis. This is to be done manually by employees on a periodic basis. The emails that are archived are still accessible if it turns out they will be needed at a later point, the employee can contact the person who has access to the archives with a request and the subject email would be provided. It would generally be against policy to house emails on your computer after the time you no longer need access to an email on a day to day basis.

The answer to the question of would it be possible that these email were really lost would be yes that would be possible. With that being said it would be undeniable that Lerner violated policy by not having her emails sent to the archives for two years. Is this something that she could go to jail for, I am not sure. Is this something she could go to jail for considering that the information contained in the emails could potentially contain information about possible crimes, the chances of jail time are considerably higher. Should she go to jail for this, most likely yes, unless she can provide information that shows she was following direction from someone above her, however even in this situation she should only receive a reduced jail sentence as opposed to no jail at all.

Now, based on your scenario, the likelihood of this, I mean exactly this happening to 6 other employees directly involved in this IRS scandal as pure unlucky coincidence is probable?

[Wilikon]

http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-010-003.html

 “IRS offices will not store the official recordkeeping copy of email messages that are federal records ONLY on the electronic mail system,”

translation: backing up everything is the law.

[Wilikon]

Cleta Mitchell, the attorney who represents many of the targeted conservative groups in a suit against the IRS, went on FOX News Sunday this morning to discuss the latest developments in the IRS targeting scandal.

Cleta dropped this bomb. It completely discredits the IRS’s latest talking points that Lois Lerner’s emails were lost in a single computer crash.

“I’ve had IRS employees who have emailed me this week who said all of their servers, it’s not just one little server in Washington, that there are servers in three different places in the United States. The IRS has a contract with a professional email archiving company. I want to know what the FBI has done to step in and bring forward their very sophisticated capabilities to understand what happened.”

http://youtu.be/X884f0uj9v8

[pedrog]

What abou the NSA's "backups."  

[Wilikon]

What abou the NSA's "backups."  

Yep...

GOP Rep. Asks IRS: Wouldn’t NSA Have Copies of Your Lost Emails?

The IRS is back in the national spotlight after the agency claimed that a whole swath of former IRS official Lois Lerner‘s e-mails just went missing, and her hard drive crashed and was thrown out, so that’s that. But Republican Kenny Marchant asked the current IRS commissioner a simple question today: what about the NSA?

Marchant asked John Koskinen, “Is the IRS and its emails exempt from monitoring by the FBI or the NSA.” Koskinen said he was unaware if any such exemption was given to the IRS.

Marchant then said, “So we don’t know that the emails are not totally all recoverable in some process.” In other words, if the NSA was snooping on the IRS’s emails, they could easily just hand them over…

Watch the video below, via C-SPAN 2:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-rep-asks-irs-wouldnt-nsa-have-copies-of-your-lost-emails/

[Wilikon]

IRS Cancelled Their Email Archiving Contractor Just Weeks After Lois Lerner’s Computer “Crash”

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed.

The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?”

Sonasoft was providing “automatic data processing” services for the IRS throughout the January 2009 to April 2011 period in which Lerner sent her missing emails.

But Sonasoft’s six-year business relationship with the IRS came to an abrupt end at the close of fiscal year 2011, as congressional investigators began looking into the IRS conservative targeting scandal and IRS employees’ computers started crashing left and right.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/22/irs-cancelled-contract-with-email-storage-firm-weeks-after-lerners-computer-crash/

[Spendulus]

This obvious lie about losing the emails is funny and all, but it's pretty obvious that a group of government officials used their power to punish their political opponents. That's fucked up. And it's fucked up that Obama and his supporters are helping cover it up. (Hell, Obama might've asked the IRS to do it.)

Fascist bastards.

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would've done in a situation like this? Actually, we all know, and we all know we can't say it out loud.

Fascist Bastards is a pretty accurate comment, actually.

Bitcoin is looking better all the time.

[galbros]

This is really outrageous!  Thanks for everyone who's posted more of the backstory, especially the Sonasoft information.  What the US people are letting this administration get away with is amazing.

[Wilikon]

This is really outrageous!  Thanks for everyone who's posted more of the backstory, especially the Sonasoft information.  What the US people are letting this administration get away with is amazing.

Most "US people" don't know the name of their vice president. But they know the words of the latest beyoncé's hit.

[InwardContour]

Anytime that a hard drive fails in any major corporation (I assume that the government would work the same way in this regard) someone will make an attempt to recover data on the hard drive, it is common for at least some data to be recovered.

From news reports it appears that her Microsoft outlook email account would only keep emails in a user's inbox for a certain amount of time (6 months would be the likely time-frame) after which they would be automatically deleted. If an employee wanted/needed to keep an email for a longer time then they would move them to a personal folder (aka .pst folder/file).

It is common to have compliance requirements to move emails to an archive inbox when they are no longer needed. The "archive inbox" would have emails saved and archived and then deleted from the inbox on a daily basis. This is to be done manually by employees on a periodic basis. The emails that are archived are still accessible if it turns out they will be needed at a later point, the employee can contact the person who has access to the archives with a request and the subject email would be provided. It would generally be against policy to house emails on your computer after the time you no longer need access to an email on a day to day basis.

The answer to the question of would it be possible that these email were really lost would be yes that would be possible. With that being said it would be undeniable that Lerner violated policy by not having her emails sent to the archives for two years. Is this something that she could go to jail for, I am not sure. Is this something she could go to jail for considering that the information contained in the emails could potentially contain information about possible crimes, the chances of jail time are considerably higher. Should she go to jail for this, most likely yes, unless she can provide information that shows she was following direction from someone above her, however even in this situation she should only receive a reduced jail sentence as opposed to no jail at all.

Now, based on your scenario, the likelihood of this, I mean exactly this happening to 6 other employees directly involved in this IRS scandal as pure unlucky coincidence is probable?

It would not be that unlikely, but it would mean that all of those employees should face stiff criminal penalties.

These employees could still testify about what emails were send/received regarding the additional screening of conservative groups. The threat of jail would give these employees to testify truthfully about what happened. 

[noviapriani]

I'll guarantee you if there was something on your hard drive, (or your office server) that the IRS wanted, they wouldn't have a bit of trouble getting it. Try this the next time you get a letter informing you you are being audited--- " my computer crashed and I've lost all my records!",  see how far that gets you.

 They know damn well the e-mails are incriminating to people way up the chain from Lerner.  Who-ever received/sent those emails also has a copy on their hard drive, and their server.  Let's let the NSA folks go over Barak's puters with a fine toothed comb and see what they find.

[sana8410]

The contents of a hard drive are never gone.  They backed up and stored, they exist so this is a huge lie.  The emails must have implicated Lerner and Obama.  Why else would they "claim" they were gone?These people are criminals of the worst kind and should be in jail.

[noviapriani]

The contents of a hard drive are never gone.  They backed up and stored, they exist so this is a huge lie.  The emails must have implicated Lerner and Obama.  Why else would they "claim" they were gone?These people are criminals of the worst kind and should be in jail.

The investigation into the IRS is being carried out by one of Obama's adamant supporters (not to mention campaign contributors) and who just happened to be working in the justice dept. and personally appointed by Eric Holder. Those e-mails are history.

[Rigon]

So, all the experts agree this is a lie and that the data can be retrieved so what is Camp going to do about it? Certainly there are honest IT Tech employees in DC that work for the government and do those backup and know where to go get the data and Camp needs to get that ordered asap before obama has the entire server destroyed to hide the facts.

[zolace]

So, all the experts agree this is a lie and that the data can be retrieved so what is Camp going to do about it? Certainly there are honest IT Tech employees in DC that work for the government and do those backup and know where to go get the data and Camp needs to get that ordered asap before obama has the entire server destroyed to hide the facts.

Well, how many servers did those emails go through… NSA should have copies… Bring me the hard drive, as long as the disc is intact I will get stuff off of it, I usually charge 100 for that but, since Obama likes to pay out millions for this kind of work, I'm sure a few million and I can have it done in an hour or two…
Please, give me a break..
By the way, the software to do this is free…