d-usa wrote:
That free commercial for his book was an entertaining read.

Of course something that you should take to heart while you swoon over every word ushered by the investigators:

"Judge Sullivan knows better than to trust the government’s blanket, bald, and rote denials of wrongdoing and the existence of evidence. He’s seen the difference between an internal investigation’s results and the fresh report of an independent prosecutor who has neither a job, nor power, nor a personal or political agenda to protect."

We could have appointed an independent prosecutor a long long long long time ago. But some people in congress have a job, power, and personal and political agendas to protect...

He wants to know what every citizen who gave any thought to the issues would want to know—real answers. Those emails have not disappeared.

 dogma wrote:
Why even have an investigation, Sidney Powell knows all:

He wants to know what every citizen who gave any thought to the issues would want to know—real answers. Those emails have not disappeared.

 whembly wrote:

Because she's right.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Because she's right.

Well, no, its because she's obnoxious, opinionated, and trying to sell a book. She makes no effort, at all, to analyze the facts of the case and simply proceeds on the assumption that the IT personnel working for the IRS are lying; without actually saying as much.

Lazy analysis, and lazier journalism.

...
MINUTE ORDER. In light of [26] the Declarations filed by the IRS, the IRS is hereby ORDERED to file a sworn Declaration, by an official with the authority to speak under oath for the Agency, by no later than August 22, 2014.

In this Declaration, the IRS must:

(1) provide information about its efforts, if any, to recover missing Lois Lerner emails from alternate sources (i.e., Blackberry, iPhone, iPad);

(2) provide additional information explaining the IRS’s policy of tracking inventory through use of bar code property tags, including whether component parts, such as hard drives, receive a bar code tag when serviced. If individual components do not receive a bar code tag, provide information on how the IRS tracks component parts, such as hard drives, when being serviced;

(3) provide information about the IRS’s policy to degauss hard drives, including whether the IRS records whose hard drive is degaussed, either by tracking the employee’s name or the particular machine with which the hard drive was associated; and

(4) provide information about the outside vendor who can verify the IRS’s destruction policies concerning hard drives.
...

 dogma wrote:
And what does Justice Sullivan intend to do if the emails are not produced? Or if there were no efforts made to recover data from alternative devices?

...
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over the trial, held a hearing on February 13, 2009, at which he held the prosecution in contempt for failing to turn over documents to Stevens’s defense. He ordered a special investigation of the case.

It was later discovered that the prosecution failed to disclose an interview with Allen, and the prosecution knowingly allowed Allen to contradict what he had said in the interview and lie under oath at the trial.
...

 whembly wrote:

I dunno... why don't you ask him?

 whembly wrote:

He's a honey badger... we know that:

 whembly wrote:

If that kind of sloppiness regarding subpoenaed documents is occurring, there should be serious concerns.

 whembly wrote:

It's the idea that we must emphasis that many of these documents, belong to the public.

 whembly wrote:

Federal officials are entrusted with preserving them BY LAW and that they do not own them.

 whembly wrote:

In many private sector circumstances, those who "lost" or failed to preserve required docs would likely face serious consequences. Not "retraining" like some government officials are pushing.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

If that kind of sloppiness regarding subpoenaed documents is occurring, there should be serious concerns.

Sure, but the solution isn't chasing Lois Lerner, or any IRS employee for that matter. Doing so is mere grandstanding, as I've said

 focusedfire wrote:

Really? This is a very casual dismissal of a system your democrats set up in the 1970's.

 focusedfire wrote:

Your saying that we shouldn't go after Lerner and Obama is like saying we should not have gone after E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and then POTUS Richard M. Nixon.

 focusedfire wrote:

The IRS's SUPPRESSION/VIOLATION of a certain political group through possible direction from the White House is very much a same situation of where then standing President Nixon was suspected to have misused government resources in order to exact damage upon a political rival group.
ff

 dogma wrote:

 focusedfire wrote:

Really? This is a very casual dismissal of a system your democrats set up in the 1970's.

They're not "my democrats", I don't vote for or identify with any political party.

Moreover, attributing the present state of 501(c), especially 501(c)(4), solely to the Democrats is disingenuous at best.

 focusedfire wrote:

Your saying that we shouldn't go after Lerner and Obama is like saying we should not have gone after E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and then POTUS Richard M. Nixon.

Hunt and Liddy explicitly broke the law, it does not appear that Lerner did the same. Further, it does not seem that Obama committed an impeachable offense, unlike President Nixon who was almost certainly guilty of conspiracy.

 focusedfire wrote:

The IRS's SUPPRESSION/VIOLATION of a certain political group through possible direction from the White House is very much a same situation of where then standing President Nixon was suspected to have misused government resources in order to exact damage upon a political rival group.
ff

No, it really isn't. Watergate involved burglary and an actual conspiracy, neither of which are evident here.

 focusedfire wrote:

Only reason they were able to make the case against Nixon and his crew were because of the tapes.

We know that there were emails that were destroyed. This is very analogous to the "missing tapes".

 focusedfire wrote:

And oh yeah, what happened at the IRS was a federal crime.

 focusedfire wrote:

Btw, my use of the term "your democrats" is solely a reference to your defending them (as the established party in power / the party in control of the IRS) here.

jamesk1973 wrote:
If using the IRS as a political weapon is not dealt with now, just wait until the other party gets into power.

Then let the lamentations begin.

"A Department of Justice attorney told a Judicial Watch attorney on Friday that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there's a catastrophe, so the government can continue operating," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News's Shannon Bream.
"But it would be too hard to go get Lois Lerner’s e-mails from that backup system," Fitton continued, paraphrasing the DOJ official. "So, everything we’ve been hearing about scratched hard drives, about missing e-mails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration, it's all been a pack of malarkey. They could get these records, but they don’t want to."

 Ouze wrote:
Either his "paraphrasing" was actually mistaken - my guess - or someone's in contempt for not complying with a lawful subpoena.,

 motyak wrote:
I wonder how hard they are paraphrasing them though, it's not like Judicial Watch are unbiased or anything. And Fox would probably take any kind of paraphrasing as something to latch onto. I wouldn't get your hopes up whembly.

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.

We all know by now that Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar “crashes,” leading many to speculate that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry perhaps held the key. Now, the Observer can confirm that a year after the infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry—and without making any effort to retain the emails from it.

Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revelations, I’m confident he’s not finished.

In two elusive and nebulous sworn declarations, we can glean that Ms. Lerner had two Blackberries. One was issued to her on November 12, 2009. According to a sworn declaration, this is the Blackberry that contained all the emails (both sent and received) that would have been in her “Outlook” and drafts that never were sent from her Blackberry during the relevant time.

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.

Lerner was issued another Blackberry for Valentine’s Day 2012—also after she came under fire for her targeting

of conservative groups. The IRS still has that Blackberry. It’s now in the possession of the Inspector General of the Treasury, but the new device would not have the data from the prior three years. That was most likely the point of getting the new device.

According to Mr. Manning, however: “standard IRS practice and policy in the collection of electronic data does not include collecting data from Blackberry devices because the email of a Blackberry user is collected through the process of collecting the contents of the user’s Outlook mailbox files.” Notably, the affidavit does not explain IRS standard procedure for handling the technology of individuals who are the subject of Congressional oversight hearings or of retrieving data on a Blackberry after its owner’s computer has crashed. One would think that was a “no-brainer.”

This most recent revelation of destruction of evidence and refusal to retain data and documents despite a Congressional inquiry is beyond outrageous. It screams of guilt and creates a presumption in the law that the evidence would prove what those who were targeted and harassed claim. Judge Sullivan, like most Americans, wants the “missing” emails that we all know are there somewhere.

Aside from the fact the IRS was required to keep hard copies, we now know they should exist on Blackberry servers as well as Google and perhaps others. Indeed, the Department of Justice has disclosed that they all should be on a government server—as we suspected.

Judge Sullivan has already appointed federal Magistrate Judge John Facciola to assist the parties in finding the emails on other devices. Between the two of them, they can demand production of the emails from the servers, and there are still more questions to answer.

What are all the servers the emails went through? Blackberry is touted as the most secure, so surely the emails should be found there. All of the data on her current Blackberry should be provided immediately to Judge Sullivan, for whatever insight it might provide. There’s no reason for the IRS to hold out on that. It should be given to Darrell Issa and Congress also. Nothing required in the production of the emails through the Blackberry could possibly hamper the Inspector General’s investigation.

And what about “ghost” email accounts? The IRS should be able to determine, or Judge Sullivan can, whether any of the officials whose emails are missing used personal accounts or other names for business emails they didn’t want going through the federal system even though they were required to do so.

One thing is clear: the IRS has no interest in recovering the emails. It has deliberately destroyed evidence and another direct source of the emails it claims were “lost.” It has been blatantly negligent if not criminal in faiing to preserve evidence and destroying it instead.

Don’t be surprised if Judge Sullivan decides it’s time to order production of everything on that Blackberry, issue subpoenas to third party servers including Blackberry for the dates covered by the Blackberry the IRS destroyed, unleash Judge Facciola, allow Judicial Watch more discovery, prohibit the IRS from destroying anything else, and start a list of lawyers who would make a good special prosecutor.

 whembly wrote:
Judicial Watch: DOJ Admits Lois Lerner’s E-mails Exist

"A Department of Justice attorney told a Judicial Watch attorney on Friday that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there's a catastrophe, so the government can continue operating," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News's Shannon Bream.
"But it would be too hard to go get Lois Lerner’s e-mails from that backup system," Fitton continued, paraphrasing the DOJ official. "So, everything we’ve been hearing about scratched hard drives, about missing e-mails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration, it's all been a pack of malarkey. They could get these records, but they don’t want to."

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Judicial Watch: DOJ Admits Lois Lerner’s E-mails Exist

"A Department of Justice attorney told a Judicial Watch attorney on Friday that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there's a catastrophe, so the government can continue operating," Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News's Shannon Bream.
"But it would be too hard to go get Lois Lerner’s e-mails from that backup system," Fitton continued, paraphrasing the DOJ official. "So, everything we’ve been hearing about scratched hard drives, about missing e-mails of Lois Lerner, other IRS officials, other officials in the Obama administration, it's all been a pack of malarkey. They could get these records, but they don’t want to."

Sorry, why are we taking the word of a DOJ attorney when it comes to IRS procedure? I worked for DOJ for nearly 10 years, and there are several fishy parts to this:

1. Even if we take what the attorney says at face value (and I don't), this is not an official DOJ release (which would come through O-Com). So saying "DOJ admits" is a lie. But I guess "DOJ attorney says to his buddy" doesn't have quite the same click bait to it.

2. I regularly participated in data backups for cases. Those back ups had 0 to do with email systems. They were backups of electronic discovery, litigation databases, and underlying evidence data. Unless her email had already been added to a litigation database as evidence, there is 0 reason for it to be in the backup system.

3. Taking the word of a DOJ attorney on an IT issue? Sure, I regularly go to my stock broker to get medical advice too.

Frankly? This whole article is pretty much clickbait fluff, designed to do exactly what we see it has done: have people who are already inclined to agree with what it says pass it around, while being able to completely distance itself from its rank bs.

 whembly wrote:

While that's interesting... we don't KNOW what the backup system is used/configured for the IRS. Right? They don't use the same as the DOJ's...right?

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

While that's interesting... we don't KNOW what the backup system is used/configured for the IRS. Right? They don't use the same as the DOJ's...right?

Kind of my point in the whole thing. We do we give a crap what a DOJ attorney has to say about IRS procedure? Does he work at the IRS? No. Does he do IT for the IRS? No.

So why do we give a crap what he has to say again?

Oh right, because it feeds the notion of "GIANT GUB'MINT CONSPIRACY!".

 whembly wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

While that's interesting... we don't KNOW what the backup system is used/configured for the IRS. Right? They don't use the same as the DOJ's...right?

Kind of my point in the whole thing. We do we give a crap what a DOJ attorney has to say about IRS procedure? Does he work at the IRS? No. Does he do IT for the IRS? No.

So why do we give a crap what he has to say again?

Oh right, because it feeds the notion of "GIANT GUB'MINT CONSPIRACY!".

I give a fething crap because of the IRS' handling of this.

Not once... zero... have I seen the IRS' (or any department for that matter) that describes their IT "Disaster Recover Plans". That's a problem...

This is basic Information Systems 101 stuff.

At this point, I can see this administration is trying very hard to tamp this down until after the November elections. But, we will get answers.

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

While that's interesting... we don't KNOW what the backup system is used/configured for the IRS. Right? They don't use the same as the DOJ's...right?

Kind of my point in the whole thing. We do we give a crap what a DOJ attorney has to say about IRS procedure? Does he work at the IRS? No. Does he do IT for the IRS? No.

So why do we give a crap what he has to say again?

Oh right, because it feeds the notion of "GIANT GUB'MINT CONSPIRACY!".

I give a fething crap because of the IRS' handling of this.

Not once... zero... have I seen the IRS' (or any department for that matter) that describes their IT "Disaster Recover Plans". That's a problem...

This is basic Information Systems 101 stuff.

At this point, I can see this administration is trying very hard to tamp this down until after the November elections. But, we will get answers.

Again, my point isn't that "ER MER GERD WE DERNT NERD TO NER!!!!"

It's that the guy whose word they are taking, has 0 knowledge of the circumstances.

Let me give you an equivalent:

I work for the FTC. An opposite statement would be me going to someone and saying "Man, IRS is in a bind because their triple redundant systems all failed and the email is gone! But no one is going to believe them!"

A headline reading "FTC SHOWS LERNER DEFENSE CORRECT, REPUBLICANS GIANT POOPY MEANIE HEADS!" would be just as much bs as the article you linked. Do you see my point now?