IRS Recycled Lerner Hard Drive 682
phrackthat (2602661) writes The Senate Finance Committee has been informed that the IRS recycled the hard drive of Lois Lerner, which will deprive investigators of the ability to forensically retrieve emails which were supposedly deleted or lost in a "crash." This news comes after the IRS revealed that it had lost the emails of Lois Lerner and six other employees who were being investigated regarding the targeting of conservative groups and donors.
Re:right-wing spin (Score:5, Informative)
BULLSHIT!!!!
A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner [washingtonpost.com]
In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division. ...
The Pinocchio Test
In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.
FWIW, "four Pinoocchios" is as bad as it get when it comes to lying.
And that was over a year ago, before 12 months of foot-dragging culminating with seven cases of "the dog ate my hard drive."
Re:Recycled Hard Drive?! (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately there are no details of this recycled drive on Fox News, that's not surprising that they spin it like the IRS suddenly destroyed a HD. Politico [politico.com] has much more detail.
As part of the investigation, the GOP has asked for all media that Lerner may had used like old hard drives, thumb drives, etc. This is fairly normal. The hard drive in question was in Lerner's computer until summer 2011. It had crashed and IT staff replaced it. The GOP wanted the hard drive so that tech experts could try to recover the data. But IT has long recycled that drive as it was no longer functioning. Personally I don't know of many IT staff that keep broken hard drives for 3 years.
Re:Fox News? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-lost-lois-lerners-emails-in-tea-party-probe/
It is a shame to NBC and ABC when even CBS is doing their job to some degree.
Re:Anti-tax, not conservative, groups (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fox News? (Score:2, Informative)
Why is no one in these meetings asking the fecking obvious question - why were her emails only stored on the one hard disk? What happened to the server side store? The archives? The on site backups? The off site backups?
Re:Fox News? (Score:5, Informative)
"You can't erase e-mails, not today, They've gone through too many servers. They can't say they've been lost. That's like saying, 'The dog ate my homework.' They're there, They know they're there, and we'll subpoena them, if necessary, and we'll have them."
Re:How deep is the rot in Washington? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: left-wing spin (Score:4, Informative)
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/14/read-the-inspector-general-report-on-the-irs-scandal/
The IRS inspector General disagrees with you.
Why where the emails only on the desktop drive? (Score:5, Informative)
I work for local government (why I'm posting as an AC) in a state with strong Sunshine Laws. ALL of our incoming and outgoing emails are archived as they are part of the public record! Even if I deleted all of my emails, they can still be searched and produced if requested. Why isn't this the case at the Federal level????
Re:Fox News? (Score:4, Informative)
They used to have a secret forum [wikipedia.org] but it was exposed. (Not that they reported on it!)
Re:Fox News? (Score:4, Informative)
Additionally, when her drive crashed, IT would have restored those emails from backup at that point, so even a loss of the backup isn't justification.
Re:How deep is the rot in Washington? (Score:4, Informative)
You... you know the actual story, right? Not just the fox news version?
This isn't an issue of "politicization". The IRS was finally DOING ITS JOB and reviewing the applications of groups applying for tax-exempt status. They thought it would save time to, rather than investigate, just assume that groups with certain key words in their name - among them "tea party" and "occupy" - were engaged in political activity which should deny them that status. Amazing how Fox never reports on any groups OTHER than their chosen ones having had problems due to this, isn't it? Well, it's much easier to change the facts to match your preconceived notions than to change your notions to match the facts. And yelling about impeaching Obama is just so durned much fun!
In any case, the whole issue is about two things - 1. It's bad to profile people, anyone, anywhere, and 2. There is a strong group in Washington that doesn't want the IRS to be doing ANY kind of job, let alone stopping people from improperly receiving tax breaks for influencing elections. The ability to pretend it's some type of political cover-up is just gravy.
Re:Recycled Hard Drive?! (Score:4, Informative)
It truly baffles me to no end when people use the wrongs of the past to somehow justify the wrongs of today.
So I guess we just say F' it and let our elected officials get away with whatever they want. Justice was overrated anyways.
No need to be baffled. You are seeing his statement backward. He is not saying this case is excusable because it happened before, he is asking why this case is being treated with such fervor while the previous one wasn't. After all, this thread is metanews about the reaction to the scandal, not any reflection on the actual happenings at the IRS/Treasury.
Re: left-wing spin (Score:4, Informative)
It also came out before they realized they targeted progressive groups just as often or more often.
Why are you lying? Hundreds of conservative groups had their applications deliberately delayed (past the election cycle) while progressive groups were pushed right through. Progressive groups were not subjected to illegal inquiries about the books their members read, what they think about, whether or how they pray, and more. The reason the IRS came out (when it was clear this was going to become public) and apologized for mistreating hundreds of conservative groups was because that's what happened. You're trying to wish it away, just like the administration.
If the opposite had happened (a conservative administration was running the IRS, and it was hundreds of progressive groups' applications tied up for years because of the names of the groups, and group organizers were told to respond with lists of all members, what books those members read, etc), you'd be shrieking at the top of your lungs, and you know it.
Re:White collar prison (Score:4, Informative)
Just when we think the IRS can't be any more evil (Score:5, Informative)
...It gets worse. They are now claiming "my dog ate my homework" for precisely, and only, every employee named in this investigation. It would be fitting to apply the IRS' own special rule here, which is that if you can't prove your innocence, you're guilty. Long sentences for each of the accused, unless those hard drives can be made to miraculously reappear.
Re:Fox News? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How deep is the rot in Washington? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fox News? (Score:4, Informative)
The Tea Party is on one side. The Libs, Conservatives, IRS, EPA, Dept of Ed, Dept of Energy, BLM, ICE, Fusion Centers, NSA, and quite a few more are on the other side.
Re:Fox News? (Score:4, Informative)
Also
Re:How deep is the rot in Washington? (Score:4, Informative)