In what can only be seen as a brazen, arrogant defiance of the law, the IRS not only claims the dog ate their emails, they’re not sorry to boot and screw America for even doubting the all-powerful, jack-booted enforcement arm of the Obama regime.
Some of the lamest lies I have ever heard in my entire life are coming from the forked tongues of Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. As angry as I am at Paul Ryan over illegal immigration and Obamacare, he hit it out of the park when he declared that no one believes the crap issuing from the IRS:
“This is unbelievable,” Ryan began. “I am sitting here listening to this testimony… I just, I don’t believe it. That’s your problem, nobody believes you.”
His take down of Koskinen was epic and a must see
Did you know that the IRS has or had a contract with Sonasoft, starting in 2005, to back up their emails off site? To recap: The IRS claims it can’t provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested by Congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes. It seems the IRS only retains email on their servers for six months. After that, the email exists only on the hard drive of the physical desktop computer of the employee in question. And therefore, if that hard drive crashes, those emails are lost forever. Employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives. Which, evidently, they did not (that alone should get the employees arrested… details, details). Seven hard drives magically crashed and burned or some such nonsense. Clear violations of the Federal Records Act, which requires paper copies of these emails to be printed and stored just in case of computer problems, abound.
FedSpending.org states that the IRS had the contract with Sanosoft starting in 2005, for “automatic data processing services.” They list the IRS as a customer and as recently as 2009 were promoting their business using the IRS as leverage (someone needs a spellchecker):
The irony is rich here… a document posted on Sonasoft’s website describes its services saying its system “archives all email content and so reduces the risk of non-compliance with legal, regulatory and other obligations to preserve critical business content.” Unless, of course, the client is the IRS.
From FrontPage:
It beggars belief that so many emails could vanish into the ether, somehow evading the multiple-redundant backups and system safeguards that are supposed to be in place.
“The Obama administration’s claim that the IRS has ‘lost’ two years of Lois Lerner’s emails is implausible to anyone who understands how email systems work,” according to John Hinderaker, a Claremont Institute fellow. “The Obama administration is lying, and lying in a remarkably transparent way.”
“Nothing digital ever dies,” so the emails must still exist somewhere in cyberspace, Cannon opines. They must be retained on offsite email servers, in files kept by other IRS officials, and in the email accounts and servers of recipients employed by other organizations or agencies.
“This is almost certainly true if they were sent to White House officials,” he writes. “It should be true, anyway: the President[ial] Records Act requires their preservation.”
And there is sooo much more… Did you know that the White House learned of Lerner’s crashed hard drive 6 weeks before Congress? Yep – from Protein Wisdom/CNSNews:
In sworn testimony Friday, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen admitted that the IRS told the Obama administration about Lois Lerner’s missing emails in April, six weeks before telling Congress, even though Congress had subpoenaed Lerner’s emails as part of its investigation into the alleged muzzling of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status before the 2010 election.
“The IRS knew in February, or maybe even in March, and Treasury and the White House knew at least in April — but Congress and the American people didn’t find out until June. Were you purposely not telling us?” House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp (R-Mich.) asked Koskinen. “Were you purposely not revealing this to the American people?”
“No, as I told you…our original thought was to complete the Lois Lerner email production–complete the review of what other custodians (IRS employees) had a problem, and produce a report to you, laying it all out,” Koskinen said.
“So why did the IRS inform the Executive Branch agencies, the White House, the administration, but kept it secret from the Congress, who was conducting an investigation?” Camp asked.
“We were not keeping it a secret,” Koskinen said. “It was our public report to you that has in fact provided you this information, there’s been no attempt to keep it a secret. My position has been, when we provide information, we should provide it completely. If we provide you incomplete information, people sometimes are tempted to leap to the wrong conclusion, not based on any facts, so we thought it would be important to give you the full description–
“It’s okay for the White House and Treasury to leap to a conclusion six weeks before the Congress,” Camp shot back.
Camp also asked Koskinen if there had been any discussion within the IRS about when to tell Congress about Lerner’s crashed hard drive and the missing emails, which were written during the critical 2009-2011 period of the investigation.
“Certainly,” Koskinen said, but he added that those discussions did not include the Treasury Department.
“Well then how did Treasury find out about it?” an incredulous Camp asked.
Camp told the committee he received a letter from the White House two days ago, telling him that the Obama White House learned about the missing Lois Lerner emails in April and was informed by the Treasury Department.
Makes you pine for the good ole’ Nixon days, doesn’t it? ‘Criminal’ doesn’t quite cover it. Tell me how this is not obstruction of justice. No one believes that someone doesn’t have copies of those emails – even if it is only the NSA (You know they have them – they record everything from calls to our most intimate moments. You really think they don’t have the IRS’ most notorious communiques on file?).
And don’t hold your breath for Boehner to convene a Select Committee to get to the bottom of all this… Progressives on both sides of the aisle are complicit. They hate the Tea Party and condone this sort of persecution. They hate Conservative groups such as True the Vote that bring corruption into the light – just ask Catherine Engelbrecht who has been visited not only by the IRS, but by a myriad of government agencies who want to shut her up. Congress does not care about the truth – period. Obama’s ludicrous statement that there is not even a smidgen of corruption at the IRS is an historic lie. Corruption is endemic to them – the whole body politic is compromised.
We’re not just speaking of Lois Lerner’s emails either. There were six other individuals, all complicit in this scandal, all have had their email magically destroyed. What a coinkydink, huh? Another important fact is that Lerner, during the time in question, made over 35 visits to the White House, indicating collusion with Obama and his cronies on the Tea Party witch hunt. Nikole Flax, Chief of Staff to former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was among the lucky other six who had all evidence erased against them. According to the Daily Caller, Flax “made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010, and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs.” Douglas Shulman made 118 visits to Obama’s lair. All these visits tie in very neatly with the targeting of Tea Party conservatives:
The visits started just as the IRS’ targeting of the Tea Party began; the last occurred two days before the scandal broke in May 2013. On the day of her last visit, according to the Daily Caller, Flax got an email from Lerner seeking advice on a plan to coordinate with the Justice Department to criminally prosecute conservative activists.
Responding to this email, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, Flax gave the green light to Lerner’s plan to coordinate criminal prosecutions with DOJ, a suggestion that had been made by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
We also know that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings’ staff was in contact with Lerner about the conservative group True the Vote.
Whitehouse and Cummings might be two of the “Democratic offices” referred to in a statement from the House Ways and Means Committee when it derided IRS’ claims that “it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.”
Forget getting caught with their hand in the Tea jar, these asshats didn’t care if they got caught. They don’t fear being prosecuted at all. The IRS’ own employee handbook proves they are lying. From iOwnTheWorld:
What is going on in Congress right now with the IRS just cries out for a torches and pitchforks moment, with a side of tar and feathers. It is a brazen obstruction of justice and another in-your-face facet of this lawless presidency. They concealed and destroyed evidence. They lied under oath about it. Now, the Progressive/Marxists who are conspiring against America in general, are openly sneering at us. Some damning evidence against Obama and his minions must have been in those emails. So damning that a hard drive Armageddon was in order.
The government is laughing at Americans, because they think there is nothing we can do. One wonders how long we will stand by and let this go on. Government is now evidently an obstruction of justice in and of itself. I think it is time for an obstruction of government, don’t you?
Update: IRS CANCELLED Contract with Email-Storage Firm Weeks After Lerner’s Computer Crash
IRS Awards Contract to Unisys to Deliver On-Demand Storage Service via Private Cloud Solution
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Editor/Author
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton is a Libertarian and she writes at NoisyRoom.net. NoisyRoom is a Conservative blog that focuses on political and national issues of interest to the American public.