Democrats who had hoped for at least a week to sleep off their election night hangovers are getting no rest after the latest disclosure of court documents by advocacy group Judicial Watch.
Judicial Watch has spent a great deal of time and resources seeking information about the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
In September, Judicial Watch asked the court for permission to conduct discovery into how “lost and/or destroyed” records might be recovered; the IRS is fighting transparency efforts, but their latest response to the discovery request contains inconsistencies that could pull the rug out from under IRS officials responsible for the cover up.
Via Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch lawyers reviewed the IRS court filings and concluded that the agency “did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails.”
IRS attorneys conceded that they had failed to search the agency’s servers for missing emails because they decided that “the servers would not result in the recovery of any information.” They admitted they had failed to search the agency’s disaster recovery tapes because they had “no reason to believe that the tapes are a potential source of recovering” the missing emails. And they conceded that they had not searched the government-wide back-up system because they had “no reason to believe such a system … even exists.”
But what’s this? The inconvenient truth, documented for all time courtesy of court filings? [Emphasis in bold mine:]
The IRS admitted to Judge Sullivan that the agency failed to “submit declarations about any of the foregoing items because it had no reason to believe that they were sources from which to recover information lost as a result of Lerner’s hard drive failure.” [Emphasis added] Department of Justice attorneys for the IRS had previously told Judicial Watch that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. In the October federal court filing, the IRS does not deny that the government-wide back-up system exists, and acknowledges to the court that 760 other email “servers” have been discovered but had not been searched.
The IRS also refuses to disclose the names of the IRS officials who may have information about the IRS scandal, citing unspecified threats. The IRS says it pulled documents about the scandal from various employees into a “Congressional database” and that it has only searched this one “database” for missing records. Incredibly, the IRS has not searched any of the IRS’s regular computer systems for any missing records and admits that it has only searched a “database” that it knows does not contain the missing records being sought by the court, Judicial Watch, and Congress.
After two years of fighting, it has become clear to the attorneys at Judicial Watch and to the public that this administration is not interested in transparency as to the IRS targeting of conservatives.
You can read the brief containing the IRS’s admission here.
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Comments
I think the strategy is called running out the clock.
So what’s next, is Judge Sullivan as angry about the lies and disregard of his orders as the citizens?
Oh, yeah only 40% of the citizens care and that doesn’t include the media!
Repeal the 16th.
Make the IRS a collector only of tariffs and excises.
Institute a tax system that ONLY CAN raise sufficient revenue for the needs of a Constitutional Federal government, and NOTHING else.
This cannot be allowed to continue if any of us would consider ourselves a free people who have a government.
The Obami are transparent. They are clearly criminals.
While we’re about it, it needs to be clearly stated that also repealing the 17th and 19th Amendments would go a long way towards solving our problems with government.
This is so outrageous!
Holder belongs in JAIL.
I’m sure he is on the top of O’s list for executive amnesty. And Lerner is next. The all the illegals, and the GITMO detainees.
I wouldn’t put ANYTHING past him!!
The statute of limitations on most crimes by federal employees is five years – but things like obstruction and aiding/abetting don’t start their clock until the last act.
Don’t be so sure anyone but Holder will get a pardon – and even he isn’t a lock. Obama threw his own grandmother and pastor under the bus without blinking; the idea he would cover anyone on the way out the door is a stretch.
He might be getting there. His honor has a reputation in these matters. The IRS may have tested his patience too far here.
Oops, that was meant as a reply to Merlin about Judge Sullivan getting angry about this. We’ll see if his reputation is well-founded. This is pretty in-your-face in the world of law after all.
When her hard drive “crashed” why didn’t they restore her hard drive from backups?
With all those emails under subpoena?
That’s cra-cra-crazy talk.
The hard-drive is and always was a red herring. In a large organization IT environment, copies of emails might reside on local hard drives, but only for performance reasons. The real email repositories are on the servers, which are multiple and redundant. And the servers are regularly backed up, both on-site and off-site.
The idea that her emails are not recoverable is just preposterous, bald-faced lie, and anyone with IT expertise knows this.
And even if the IRS truly did lose them, then just subpoena the other organizations that they know she was conspiring with…the emails will reside in their computer systems, too.
I think this is why Holder is on his way out… now that Hairy Reed is gone, the truth is about to be revealed.
Perhaps this could be prosecuted under Sarbanes-Oxley?
You know, just like the guy with the fish.
Only this time it would be appropriate.
If you or I tried to pull this crap when the IRS, or SEC, or FTC, or XYZ came knocking, that is exactly what they would do.
One set of rules for me, and another set for thee.
Time for lock up without bail – what does it take for a judge to file his own perjury, contempt, obstruction charges ?????
The crimes of the leftists hijacking the IRS will continue to go unchecked by the spineless hacks infesting the leadership of the GOP.
Want change you can believe in? Boot those hacks out.