I’m a day late to this, but better late than never.
After admitting that Lois Lerner’s supposedly missing emails were in the back-up system, the IRS has filed court documents in response to a Judge’s Order indicating that after Lerner was summoned to testify before Congress, the IRS wiped clean Lerner’s Blackberry.
Via Fox News:
Lois Lerner’s BlackBerry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration.Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the BlackBerry was “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”That date – June 2012 – is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.”We had already talked to her. Our personal staff and Oversight Committee staff had sat down with Ms. Lerner and confronted her about information we were getting from conservative groups in the state of Ohio and around the country,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News.”If you intentionally destroy evidence, that is a crime. If you make a statement in court saying the evidence is not available and it is, that is also a crime,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.
The significance is that the Blackberry could have served as a means of recovering emails independent of the back up system, which the IRS still is disputing is a viable means of recovering the emails.
I don’t know if Lerner had the ability to text and instant message on her Blackberry, but if she did, that also could be important since we know Lerner and others suggested instant messaging as a means of avoiding computer back up systems.
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