IRS: Oh, those Lois Lerner emails, yeah they’re backed up
Prior IRS denials have “been a pack of malarkey”.
Judicial Watch revealed today that Lois Lerner’s fabled “missing e-mails” may still exist on a government backup system.
Via Judicial Watch:
Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday 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. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.
We obviously disagree that disclosing the emails as required would be onerous, and plan to raise this new development with Judge Sullivan.
This is a jaw-dropping revelation. The Obama administration had been lying to the American people about Lois Lerner’s missing emails. There are no “missing” Lois Lerner emails – nor missing emails of any of the other top IRS or other government officials whose emails seem to be disappearing at increasingly alarming rate. All the focus on missing hard drives has been a diversion. The Obama administration has known all along where the email records could be – but dishonestly withheld this information. You can bet we are going to ask the court for immediate assistance in cutting through this massive obstruction of justice.
In an interview with Fox News, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton laid out his plan to make sure that the government is forced to reveal anything that is backed up via this system.
Earlier this month a federal judge ordered a special inquiry after IRS officials provided insufficient explanations as to the reasons behind the missing e-mails. Now, Judicial Watch is working via mediation sessions with a magistrate judge to make sure that the federal government complies both with discovery requests, and a longstanding FOIA request filed on behalf of Legal Insurrection by Judicial watch.
The results of this investigation could affect not only the investigation into the IRS, but also investigations into last year’s disastrous Obamacare rollout.
[Note: Judicial Watch represents Legal Insurrection in our attempt to obtain documents from the District of Columbia regarding the non-prosecution of David Gregory for a clear gun law violation.]
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Comments
ShaaaaaAAAAAaaaa-
Zam…
(I kid, I kid.)
Why do you think this outlaw gang is so adversarial to IGs?
Fraudsters HATE auditors.
So, if they are stored in the event of a “catastrophe” in Washington, but they are too much trouble to access, why store them at all? In a normal person’s mind, storage of anything against a day when things are really bad and they might be needed, means simplifying retrieval or use.
Put another way, that’s like storing your sailboat’s fire extinguishers at the bottom of your sail locker, under your spare anchors.
In D.C. stupidity has a whole new meaning.
“[T]hat’s like storing your sailboat’s fire extinguishers at the bottom of your sail locker, under your spare anchors.”
You keep your fire extinguishers under your spare anchors?
Bah, I always keep mine underneath the propane tanks and oily rags! I figure that way they’ll be close to the fire! 😉
Enter Lerner’s email address in the little search window. In the results window click on date modified and then scroll down to the dates in question.
Of course if the people setting up the back up system had any brains they have a decent search engine installed.
I’m not an IT guy, nor do I play one on TV. I’m marginally competent to build and operate my own desktop computer systems from off-the-shelf components and write basic database programs for the customized purposes that I need them for. That being said:
It may not be that easy. It somewhat depends on what they’re backing up all the records ON (software and hardware). It may be an ancient OS/VS2 (or OLDER) system that simply saves the files in digital format, but doesn’t have the horsepower to actually search -within- those files.
Maybe it’s some sort of compressed Hard Drive Image format which then has to be manually decompressed onto a hard drive in order to be searched. But if that’s the case, there has to be some sort of index to tell you what file belongs to which computer.
I wonder how the files are backed up? And I mean literally what is the mechanism: I know that some employers with off-site workers auto-image their work-provided computers on a scheduled basis, so that in case of lawsuit, they can turn over the work-product. My guess is something like that is what is going on here, which was never supposed to be disclosed to anyone lower than Cabinet Secretary level Staff and IT was told “don’t ever, ever talk about this. Or ELSE.”
If they backed-up the emails, they had to have a method to make them accessible/usable again for the system to realize its reason to exist. Whether they have to do a brute-force search, or reconstitute the entire system on a blank server farm, they just need to do it. After they do, everyone who said the emails were lost forever needs to be brought up on charges. Every. Single. Person. Period.
While I agree that should be the case, we are both assuming that government procedures and regulations follow logic and common sense.
They often do not. Many, many times, things are done just to give somebody a job.
Don’t be surprised if…ya know.
True. There’s a reason that “government organization” is considered by many to be an oxymoron.
They’re whining about the amount of time it would take to search the backups. BS. You plug your search terms into the engine and from there on the only time you’re expending is computer time.
This has reached the point of pure absurdity.
Sorry, wrong. Example – I have a very strict BU strategy here, as a developer. Multiple backups nightly, etc.
To extract anything from them, I have to first retore the selected file / folder / drive to someplace, THEN I can search for thing in it.
The restore process is simple, part of the backup software ( Ghost 15). While there is an option to ‘mount as virtual disk’, whcih would be searchable, it is only good for BU’s less than 1 TB, which mine are not.
But the point is, if you can’t restore the data to a useable and searchable state, it ain’t a BU.
Look we don’t need to go into the details. All the experts agree, me included that the whole lost email story was a farce. The level of incompetence that the IRS put forward was so unfathomable that you couldn’t believe it.
The important thing we learned is that they will fold at prison, but they will fold, only right before prison.
If it’s copies of backups, you will need the media to dump the mailbox into PST file(s). If it’s a proper archiving system (that private companies need for legal discovery purposes) then you are correct, it should be easily searchable.
So bold!
I suppose they will finally find the eMails after the November elections.
Or will it be after the 2016 elections?
Who knows!?
Depends how long they dare stall the court.
That depends entirely on if the Judge of said Court (either of them) grows a set of teeth and decides to hold the next set of responding Attorneys and Witnesses in Contempt until the Government complies, with attendant JAIL TIME.
Generally families start screaming when suddenly Daddy gets thrown in jail for something someone ELSE is failing to do. A little girl or boy crying on the news channels because Daddy can’t come home because President Obama wants to hide all his sins will tank public opinion faster than anything you can imagine.
Set a hearing EVERY DAY. If the Attorney for the Government shows up without the data: Contempt, and immediately go to jail. Next day, same thing? Throw THAT attorney in jail. Continue until no Government attorney will appear, then issue an arrest warrant and send the Bailiff and Sheriff for the IRS mid level managers and work your way up from there for failure to appear to an ORDERED hearing.
Start with the head of IRS’ IT division. That should get everybody moving VERY quickly.
“A little girl or boy crying on the news channels because Daddy can’t come home because President Obama wants to hide all his sins will tank public opinion faster than anything you can imagine.”
I agree with the sentiment, but you’re basing it on the assumption the media will cover that part. They won’t. They’re complicit in this, and as such they’re in CYA mode and playing active defense for the Administration.
The daily hearings and JAILING officials for Contempt, though…. THAT’s an idea I can get behind! Squeeze, until the courts get what they need or until the eyeballs pop out. The “Progressives” are BIG fans of unaccountable, automatic systems with no individual discretion. Hold them under one. 🙂
“too onerous ‘ my ass !!!!!!
When Congress ORDERS you too, and you’re a federal agency ????
Really ???
“I won’t release the tapes that prove I’m a crook because I AM NOT A CROOK’. Sound familiar ???
OH – and when you claim to have spent THOUSANDS of man hours of 100+ people, and many millions of dollars, coming up with ‘Sorry, that’s too onerous’ ???
In the real world, IT people get fired for that shit.
Ohhh, no no no, fired is the least of their worries out in the real world. For this kind of stuff they get ruined and in the case of court ordered documents they get jailed an fined into poverty by the government that is pulling the exact same stuff.
Of course this level of stuff rarely happens in the real world because its never allowed to go this far.
I knew a guy that worked for a major software company that got investigated by the feds and was found to be in the wrong. He was determined to have had no part in the actual concerns, however he still lost his job because he was on the same “team” where the crap went down. It was years before he found more than a systems admin job and he will never be able to work for any of the really well paying firms again because he is blocked from having the level of security clearance he would need to have.
100 % ‘yup’ on all.
In the real world, that very same IRS will confiscate your monies, your properties and try to send you to fu*king jail if you tell them finding those records is too onerous.
Let the record show that every… single… step… of the way, the IRS has lied, plead outright stupidity, obfuscated, obstructed, deflected, genuflected (to the -D’s on the committee) and played the “poor lil’ ol’ me” card. At every turn, they have fought any inquiry. Now, they say finding them is too onerous. Damn, these e-mails must be something to see!
Based on all the effort to hide them, one could possibly start with, “Oh, lord and master Barack Hussein Obama, I hath done thy bidding for thee as personally directed by you as we smoked crack cocaine together in the Oval Office. I have directed my minions to pounce upon any organization remotely connected to the Conservative right in this country. Furthermore, I disposed of the evidence of massive election fraud as you directed me…”
I’m only half jokin’.
There’s always the possibility that the IRS has taken all this time to sanitize the Lerner emails and when they eventually release them they will reveal nothing incriminating.
True enough, but given the level of competence IRS IT people have shown so far, would the IRS want to bet on there not being tracks of fiddling all over whatever records are eventually presented?
Well everything is possible in DC land! But 99.99% unlikely. A backup system works full time and backs up every minute of the day, largely due to the volume of data. Moreover, the sanitizer would need to know which pipe the emails go through. A modern email goes through thousands of pipes daily, almost every second due to the volume of data over various pipes. Therefore, it would be impossible to sanitize emails unless you had access to all the pipes – which is unlikely. Somewhere, on a server farm or multiple server farms, those emails reside. Probably on 100s of server farms.
So… the IRS and administration have been lying and obstructing a congressional investigation AND a private lawsuit. And the punishment for this will be…. nothing. The democrats have jettisoned the rule of law (only) when it is applied to them.
Oh, boy!! They are in some BIG TROUBLE with the Justice Department! 😆
Holder will file charges on these people when the Amazon freezes over and Brazil is hosting the Winter Olympics. Maybe.
Isn’t Holder too busy fanning the flames in Ferguson?
If they can just delay discovery until after the election…..
Oh, that’s likely been their goal all along. Delay until after the election, then do a massive data-dump, give the public 2 years to stew on it, and it will all have blown over by the time the Presidential race rolls around in 2016, and the only people still talking about it can be painted as “lunatic fringe who won’t let it go, even after we’ve ‘fixed’ the issues at IRS. They just have ‘sour grapes.'”
“Dude. That was like 2 years ago”
I am not really a fan of conspiracy theories, but with this issue lingering for so long, plus the absurdity of it all, there’s little room to think otherwise.
They have had plenty of time to do a careful review of those emails, edit out compromising details, and then update the backup tapes with fraudulent data.
Hey, a conspiracy theory is only a theory until it is proven then it is just a conspiracy.
The trail will lead all the way to President Obama, who is an unarmed black former teenager.
What I want to hear from the judge (but won’t) is “I want to see the full and complete restored emails from all IRS employees in the request sitting on my desk inside a week or I will be placing the Director of the IRS into jail for Contempt of Court. If the emails have not been produced in another week, I will place the Deputy Director of the IRS in jail right beside him, and I will repeat the process every week until the emails are produced or I run out of IRS employees. Do you understand?”
That needs to be followed up with:
When I run out of IRS employees, I will start with the Treasury Department, with the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and then the Secretary himself, and then work my way down from there.
….in 90 days, Washington, D.C. is surrounded by three rows of concertina wire and guard towers!
And Snake Plissken will say, “Fu*k that! I ain’t going! Let him get himself out!”
Just the thought of that makes me all warm and fuzzy feeling, lol.
I used to work at an e-discovery company. Trust me, you turn these over to one of those companies, they can find it. Doesn’t matter how old, doesn’t matter what format it is in. They have tools to grab it all.
They could have gotten it off the scratched hard drives too. And since I left that place, DOZENS of high end e-discovery companies have cropped up and they all know how to do it.
They asked the guy who is credited with inventing “the cloud” and he said he could have them all neatly stacked and categorized in about 2 weeks, lol.
And no doubt that two-week time frame – in true professional fashion – accounts for unforeseen delays.
If everything went according to plan, it’d be five days, one week tops…
… which is generally what happens when you get people who KNOW what they’re doing on it.
I wonder when someone is gonna have the stones to tell the luminaries in Congress that the e-mails were never on the hard drive in the first place?
I have a buddy who is a federal law enforcement officer and he mad an excellent point to me, that I would like to share.
If this had been a private company the government would have sent men with guns to physically remove the servers and take them. Not only from the building but from their private homes and offices.
That was such a chilling point that I just felt I needed to share it.
They do that all the time. They have been doing that for YEARS. And usually, when they are in the wrong and they have to give them back? They return them broken and with the data missing.
From 1990 see: http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
This case was what led me to follow everything on the law on “computer crime”.
I would like to add, if they get returned at all and aren’t stuck in the warehouse that they showed in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Oh, and if they loose your stuff, good luck getting reimbursed for it.
The House should selectively cut off funding to the IRS, DOJ and other left-wing hobby horses. Let them know what “onerous” really means.
I heard they also found 18 minutes of tape from the Nixon admin, and Jimmy Hoffa…
Come on, give holder and his department some slack here. I mean THEY along with the Gov. of Missouri are diligently involved in the railro, umm persecut, investigation in the death of that cherubic little fellow, that was gunned down by the IRA.
Keeping the racial aspect burning, along with progressive media assistance, will keep the racist American mind off of the upcoming barry edicts. I mean INSTANT citizenship for family members of MS-13, damn important you know.
irs lies, hard drives, emails, Fehhh!
The only slack I would give Holder or his department would be the decision of who to let go when I cut their budget by 70%.
That new federal program, the one that scours social media for fishy political memes, they aren’t going to like some of y’all’s comments 😉
They can kiss my sweet joy-stick…
Hey, to the DOJ. I am a conservative and you can kiss my First Amendment.
In other words, they really just don’t want to hand them over and allow their corruption to be exposed. The heck with the law, subpoenas, and court orders; those are only for use against their “enemies.”
What a surprise.
You have to wonder if there aren’t some IRS employees so offended by the behavior of Lerner and her cohorts that they’re helping with Congress’ investigation.
Can they ALL be corrupt?
Not all. But the corruption is systemic. Thats why, even if you replace the political appointees, the IRS will continue in the direction of auditing political enemies of the State.
Only solution is to clean house. Its a dept of the Executive Branch, so next POTUS needs to fire them all. Every. Single. One. And ban them from any future employment.
Not only will this reform the IRS, but agencies like the EPA and VA. Its amazing how quickly the rest of the herd shapes up when the worst offenders get eaten.
YES.
These guys are very good at compartmentalization and insulation. They hire folks from outside and the truth of the matter is that the “government employee” is more a a culture than anything else and it tends to be a very liberal culture.
Also, even though we have whistle blower laws they are kind of like cops, they only help after the crime is committed. So by the time you have protection your life is already ruined and relief moves at the speed of the courts.
The real message of Watergate – burn the tapes
justice delayed is justice denied
We were just kidding about the hard drives.
Everyone please note that NONE of this, repeat NONE, information was produced thanks to the fake phony fraud Darrell Issa and his roving House Committee.
So far Darrell’s batting 000 on any of his hearings into government waste, fraud, bias, lying, corruption etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah we get it you have the hots for Darrell Issa! Please spare us your indignation! When an entire Agency and other parts of government commit fraud, you seriously believe a stupid political committee will find this out? What’s in it for the politicians? This was produced the way it should’ve been produced – by private citizens and organizations going to court. Courts are the only vehicle the IRS fears and therefore they get results. But it did take a brave Judge to step up and get pissed off at those officials. Bravo!
When you do a deposition, your goal is to fix people to positions. If they are lying, there is nothing you can do stop them. “Perry Mason” moments never happen. You just let them lie, and get it down.
Often, an attorney doing depositions is not the attorney who will close the trap at trial. Each has a role.
Ask me dey hidin’ sumptin.