IRS: Lois Lerner had second secret personal email account (in addition to “Toby Miles”)
Account had no name designation. IRS refuses to identify email address.
Last week, in an August 24, 2015 Status Report, the Internal Revenue Service disclosed that Lois Lerner used a secret personal email account denominated as “Toby Miles.” The filing was in a FOIA case filed by Judicial Watch.
In a filing last night of an August 31, 2015 Status Report, the IRS revealed that Lerner also used “a second personal email account” that, unlike the Toby Miles account, “does not appear to be associated with a denomination; only the email address itself appears.” The IRS refuses to disclose the email address for either the Toby Miles or the newly discovered account.
(added) Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, commented on this latest disclosure:
“It is disturbing that the Obama administration’s explanations to a federal judge about Lois Lerner’s emails become inoperative after only one week. Last week, the court was told that that Lois Lerner had a second alias email account under the name “Toby Miles”. This week the court is told that the “Toby Miles” account isn’t a separate account but that that there still is a second Lerner account, address unrevealed, with IRS-related emails. This game of cat and mouse shows that both the Obama IRS and Justice Department continue with their contempt for Judge Sullivan’s orders that Ms. Lerner’s emails about this scandal be disclosed as the law requires.”
The August 31 status report reads, in part (full embed at bottom of post):
As noted in the Service’s August 24, 2015, Status Report, former Service employee Lois Lerner sent or received work-related emails from a personal email account. In particular, Lerner sent or received work-related emails from an email account which was variously denominated “Lois G. Lerner,” “Lois Home,” or “Toby Miles.” The Service had previously released twelve emails to Judicial Watch containing the denomination Toby Miles, including nine emails in which the denomination Toby Miles was redacted. On August 31, 2015, the Service rereleased copies of those nine emails to Judicial Watch without redacting the denomination Toby Miles.
At the time that we filed the August 24, 2015, Status Report, the undersigned attorneys were unable to confirm whether Lerner sent or received any work-related emails from another personal email account for the time period in question. The undersigned attorneys have now confirmed that Lerner also sent or received work-related emails from a second personal email account. Unlike the personal email account described above, that account does not appear to have been associated with a denomination; only the email address itself appears. Emails located by the Service from the second personal account have been reviewed and either released to Judicial Watch or determined to be non-responsive to these FOIA requests. Consistent with its prior releases, the Service is withholding the two personal email addresses described herein pursuant to Exemptions (b)(6) and (b)(7)(C). Out of an abundance of caution, the Service has conducted a search for all documents in the Congressional database using the email address of the personal accounts identified above. That search located approximately 400 emails from three
sources: emails and documents collected from the more than 80 custodians; emails and documents that Lerner’s attorneys provided to the Service in response to a request from one of the Congressional Committees investigating the Service; and emails that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTA”) forensically recovered and returned to the Service.The Service matched the approximately 400 emails against the material previously gathered as potentially responsive to the FOIA requests at issue here and identified approximately 160 emails that had not previously been reviewed for responsiveness to these FOIA requests. The Service reviewed those approximately 160 emails and determined that all were either non-responsive or were duplicates of material previously released to Judicial Watch.
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Judicial Watch FOIA Lois Lerner – IRS Status Report 8-31-2015
[Note Judicial Watch had represented Legal Insurrection in FOIA matters including as to David Gregory and the Virginia State Bar, and also is an advertiser.]
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Comments
I seem to be missing the issue here.
Is this about evasion of a FOIA request or something? What’s the issue with having a personal email account?
I’m going to assume that you are not a troll, and answer your question:
The short version is this: All government business is supposed to be open and available to the public for scrutiny, unless there is some legislative reason not to release it.
Lois Lerner, and the portion of the IRS under her watch, is accused of abuse of process in order to affect the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election cycle by stalling, investigating or otherwise hampering Conservative Non-Profit groups seeking IRS approval. She likewise oversaw the fast-track approval of Liberal or Democrat groups seeking non-profit status.
That action is an abuse of government process, and individuals effected desire to hold her accountable legally for her criminal violations and civil violations of the law. The (in)Justice Department has so far declined to indict her for blatant violations of the tax code.
Judicial Watch, Inc. filed a “Freedom Of Information Act” (FOIA) suit, demanding records in response to Lois Lerner’s targeting of Conservative groups. The IRS has variously claimed that the e-mails were lost when her ~personal~ work computer was damaged (VERY unlikely), has claimed that they could not find responsive records, and/or has claimed that there was no evidence of the targeting. All government business conducted is to be recorded for archival purposes. That way, if there is such a dispute as this, the investigators can go and pull the records.
What Lerner did was “bypass” those safeguards and conduct business in a unrecorded “shadow forum” where her vehement hatred of Conservatives could be on full display, without ever being captured for the public to see. The IRS, after being commanded by a Court to produce documents, only produced those from her “official” accounts, claiming that they did not know of the “shadow” accounts (VERY likely an out-and-out lie by the agency).
Unfortunately for her, she got CAUGHT using said outside communication channel. Now the IRS attorneys have to deal with what SHOULD be a very, very irate Judge who should hold those attorneys in CONTEMPT for lying to the Court due to their representation. (usually a one-way ticket to sanctions, if not disbarment).
Not a troll. I just haven’t been following the increasingly arcane depths of this scandal.
The IRS systematically granting non-profit status to leftist PACs while denying the same to conservative PACs — that is a big deal and anyone can see the problem.
A second personal email account that Lois Lerner sometimes used for work and didn’t disclose in response to a subpoena in a FOIA suit looking into the IRS targeting scandal — that’s small potatoes, however criminal it may be. (I know they got Al Capone for tax evasion, I know. And if Lois Lerner doesn’t get a pardon from an outgoing Obama, this charge might well be what gets her jail time. I know.)
I’m worried that the levels-upon-levels of this render this scandal useless for campaign purposes.
If you can’t explain a scandal to your politically-uninvolved grandmother over a cup of tea, it’s too complicated to gain any traction.
I have the same issue with Hillary Clinton’s email-server-in-the-bathroom. The big picture Clinton scandal should be the influence peddling — $140 million from Russian oligarchs while our State Department okayed the sale of 20% of our Uranium production is a MUCH bigger help to the Iranian nuclear program than anything in Obama’s bad deal. It’s huge. A billion dollars in gifts from foreign friends while she was Secretary of State. It sets a new standard for corruption. These are much, much clearer scandals that don’t require any discussion of cybersecurity or the “air gap”.
When we get bogged down in the fact that the IRS is lying in response to FOIA requests we are losing the plot, I fear.
It is most certainly NOT “small potatoes” to conduct government business on a private email account for the express purpose of avoiding both public and congressional scrutiny. Congress is entitled to oversight and avoiding it places the entire Constitution in jeopardy – and as we’ve seen, Obama treats it like toilet paper anyway.
Breaking the IRS laws was criminal. Doing it in secret is conspiracy. Potatoes don’t grown any bigger.
Estragon had the temerity to use the word “conspiracy”. Doesn’t Estragon know that only nutbaggers use that word?
The photo at top seems to indicate Ms. Lerner is in cuffs. Could that be? Will wonders never cease….
Anyone who still thinks that the IRS isn’t its own branch of government and operates above the law lives in a Disneyesque fantasy world. The IRS is a branch of the Cryptocracy.
You have a good point. Remember what happened to the Monica Lewinsky brouhaha. 19 people out of 20 had no idea what that was about, and thought Ken Starr and the Republicans had gone diving into people’s private lives out of some sort of puritanism. How many people remembered that the whole reason Starr went after Lewinsky in the first place was to get criminal evidence against Jordan and Currie, which he could then use to flip them againt Clinton?
Nobody thought Lewinsky knew anything seriously incriminating about Clinton; but Jordan and Currie had the real goods on him, and if they were facing prison they might flip. So Starr built a case against Lewinsky and told her she could either go to prison or talk. And she did talk, but her story went straight to Clinton. She said he had urged her to perjure herself; and of course there was no way to pressure him to flip on himself! He’d rather go down for suborning perjury in a civil case than confess to his more serious crimes. And then the salacious nature of the case overwhelmed everything, and to this day most people think of Clinton as the victim of unethical muckrakers, instead of as a crook and a perjurer. Had Starr known where the Lewinsky trail would lead, he’d probably have left it alone.
Buried within the layers are straight up use of government agencies to cause real and financial harm to prominent and active conservatives and their businesses.
The IRS made volumes of inappropriate document demands including donor and membership rosters. Those lists were then used to initiate frivolous audits or glean information to be used by political campaigns as propaganda.
There is also the meetings with DoJ to find a means to prosecute the conservative groups (as well as Congresscritters who were asking for prosecutions).
And the deliberate destruction of government records once Lerner knew she’d been busted. Business owners can go to jail for deleting even a single business related email in violation of the records keeping laws.
Anyone action by Lerner would have been more than sufficient for the IRS to send a taxpayer to prison forever. IMHO, this isn’t about a “campaign issue” this is about justice for the American people who live in fear of unknowingly crossing the IRS for the smallest infraction.
Lois has earned several “fraud audits” of all her personal assets!
If she will commit all she has done, she may be hiding even greater crimes. (What is her middle name? Hillary?)
They should not be carried out by the I.R.S., but by some independent legal body……
An ‘independent legal body’ doesn’t exist. You need to be disabused of that notion.
clintack:
It is policy that all government work be done through government email (for security, tracking and archiving reasons). So she is violating government policy. This is the same issue with Lisa Jackson and her “Richard Windsor” account, which she used to clandestinely work with “green” groups during development of EPA rules.
This is also (other than the “classified” issue) the same issue with the Hillary private email. It evades necessary control.
Oh, I think it’s worse than violating policy. If my memory serves, there is a Federal law (though a toothless one) that makes use of a private email account a Federal offense in these circumstances.
The problem is…as always in a lawless regime…that nobody will enforce the law.
This is life in the Obamabanana Republic.
Right – it was passed in the wake of the discovery that some in the Bush White House had discussed the politics of firing US Attorneys using their private email accounts, which was not prohibited at the time.
The policy of having emails relating to government work on government servers is an important one, because it is a tool for assuring (eventual) transparency of government operations and equal protection under the laws for our citizens.
The idea is that ALL government business is public, and ALL of it should be in writing and capable of review.
So the Obama administration expects Iran to confirm their compliance to the new nuclear agreement based on self reporting, and we should take their word on it.
But in the Obama administration, an agency is refusing to cooperate even though ordered to do so by a Federal judge.
This, folks, is a new definition of “irony”!
At least the eGOP eunuchs are holding the administration accountable — no, wait…
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
Transparency, Rule of Law, — democrat contempt for the country is on display.
Remember, though, you can’t as a dog to meow.
Congress is NOT a prosecutor. That role belongs to the executive.
And when the executive is a bunch of criminals, you have a break-down of our civil compact.
Remember though, Congress DOES have some inherent investigatory powers.
What they SHOULD do is send out the Sergeant at Arms, have him pick up Ms. Lerner for contempt for failing to answer Congress and deposit her in the Congressional Jail until such time as she sees fit to talk.
Just leave her in there until she starts singing like a canary as to who was pulling the targeting strings from the White House.
Unfortunately that seems unlikely to happen with the current weak GOP leadership. Hopefully 2016 will lead to more Tea Partiers joining the Caucus sufficient to displace “The Weeper” Boehner and “Sen. Surrender” McConnell.
I don’t disagree with any of that, though the use of the Congressional jail is pretty dusty and rusty. NOW is a great time to oil up the hinges and reinstate the prerogative, IMNHO.
However, I think that any such action would be immediately met with a writ of habeus corpus, which would be granted.
Still, it would be a worthwhile exercise, and would at least induce a pucker in the witch Lerner.
The Sergeant at Arms has no arrest powers outside the Capitol grounds and legislative office buildings.
So? Invite her to lunch with Harry Reid and Nanny Pelosi!
I’m not above subterfuge…!!!
Watergate made “The coverup is worse than the crime.” famous.
But it’s not true.
Nixon would never have had to resign without the big picture point: He got caught cheating in the election.
Scandals need a simple big picture. The IRS had its thumb on the scale in the 2008 Presidential election. Hillary Clinton sold influence to hostile foreign governments while she was Secretary of State. Those are good stories — and true.
Give me: Hillary Clinton played fast and loose with classified documents and as a result ISIL was able to attack our embassy and kill our ambassador. Now *that* would be a scandal. Heck, just the fact that foreign hackers cracked her private email server and gained access to classified data. Keep talking about that!
We aren’t going to get anywhere with air gaps and private email accounts.
THis is not the tabloids or netflix. Corrupt politicians and their government cronies learn from their predecessors and obscure things in this way.
It becomes very hard to trace and find things not vetted through the proper channels. The idea that these people were funneling government business through these channels should raise your eyebrows sufficiently without the drama factor.
We don’t actually know that foreign crackers cracked her private email server and gained access to classified data. That is pure speculation. The assumption that her server was less secure than the governments’ may not be correct, especially since we know the government’s system was cracked.
And like the problem at the EPA with Lisa Jackson’s “secret email addresses” that she used to make off the record deals with environmental groups on “sue and settle” cases, they were being used to dodge FOIA requests. Someone gave Harry Reid a copy of Mitt Romney’s tax returns and Valarie Jarrett copies of the Koch’s and other prominent Republican donors tax documents.
This in particular is the part of the FOIA that the White House is trying to avoid because it is a big well defined NO-NO that is printed on the front door of the IRS – every person who works there knows it.
How do you know someone gave Harry Reid a copy of Mitt Romney’s tax returns? He never released anything. He claimed to have received information that Romney had not paid any taxes for the past 10 years, which he attributed to a source who, according his own narrative, could not possibly have known this. You seem to be assuming that he lied about his source, and his actual source was the IRS; but that requires that the underlying claim was true. Isn’t it far more likely that nobody told him anything, let alone leaked him any documents, and he simply made the whole thing up?
Harry Reid later revealed that it was the senior Huntsman (the father of “Republican” former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman) who was his source.
Does anybody think Tom Fitton’s use of “inoperative” (a word famously used by Nixon Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler) is just coincidence ?
The usage was later mocked in “The Groove Tube (1974)” ..