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IRS Isn’t the Only Government Agency to Destroy a Hard Drive

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Photo Credit: The Daily Signal The way it’s going, government hard drives might be the next protected class under federal law.

Internal Revenue Service hard drives containing two years of emails to and from Lois Lerner, the senior Obama administration official at the heart of the alleged political targeting of conservative nonprofits, have been “recycled” and the contents destroyed. So have six of her colleagues’ hard drives. A U.S. House committee is investigating.

Hard drive shenanigans aren’t just a federal issue.

A Broward County Sheriff’s Office internal affairs audit has revealed information on outgoing Sheriff Al Lamberti’s hard drive was lost after his subordinates destroyed it with a hammer. The audit was first reported by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

No motive was given in the report, but public information could have been destroyed. Investigators can’t be sure, but complete backup copies of Lamberti’s hard drive were not located.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP: Lerner Warned IRS Employees to Hide Information from Congress (+video)

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Photo Credit: Lauren Victoria BurkeJust as the IRS tea party targeting scandal was erupting, Lois G. Lerner warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in emails because it could end up being turned over to Congress, according to an email message released Wednesday.

The 2013 email exchange between Ms. Lerner and fellow employees at the Internal Revenue Service also says that instant message conversations were probably never stored and weren’t checked during open-records requests — even though they also fell under the law requiring electronic records to be stored.

“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails — so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails,” Ms. Lerner wrote in an April 9, 2013, message.

She went on to ask whether the instant message communications were stored automatically. When a tech staffer said no but the records could be stored if employees copied them, she replied, “Perfect.”

“Why did it take us this long to get these emails? We’ve been after this for six months,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who raised the emails with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.

Read more from this story HERE.

INSANE: GOP Senator Targeted by Lerner Ways and Means Investigation Uncovers Push to Audit Senator Chuck Grassley

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreBy Sarah Swinehart.

Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator. According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.

“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Camp. “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights…

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Photo Credit: TownHallBREAKING: Lois Lerner Asked IRS to Audit Republican Senator Chuck Grassley

By Katie Pavlich.

According to emails released by the House Ways and Means Committee late Wednesday, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner wasn’t only referring conservative groups for targeting, but Republican Senator Charles Grassley as well.

Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to speak at event that was intended for Grassley, opened it, didn’t forward it to the proper recipient (Grassley) and then asked that he be referred for to the IRS for examination (audit).

“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” Chairman Dave Camp said in a statement. “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights…

Read more from this story HERE.

Government Watchdog Group Takes Legal Action Against IRS Over Lost Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: APThe government accountability group Judicial Watch filed a legal motion Friday that threatens to drag the Obama administration into federal court to answer questions about the lost emails of ex-IRS official Lois Learner and others implicated in the tea party targeting scandal.

Judicial Watch, which was at the forefront of exposing the targeting scandal, had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in May 2013 for emails of Ms. Lerner and other officials. But the IRS did not inform the group of the lost emails, even as it told the court that it was cooperating with the FOIA request.

“The IRS is clearly in full cover-up mode,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is well past time for the Obama administration to answer to a federal court about its cover-up and destruction of records.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Impeach Holder if He Won’t Appoint IRS Special Prosecutor

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Photo Credit: YouTubeAttorney General Eric Holder should be impeached if he refuses to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS tea party-targeting scandal, Sen. Ted Cruz demanded Thursday.

The Texas Republican, who has sounded the call for a special prosecutor in the scandal before, made his case for possible impeachment on the Senate floor, ripping into Holder for not standing up to President Barack Obama.

“It saddens me to say that the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder has become the most partisan Department of Justice in the history of our country,” Cruz said, blasting its lead investigator on the IRS issue, Barbara Bosserman, as a “partisan” donor who gave over $6,000 to the president’s two election campaigns. He also noted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has contributed over $100,000 to Democrats.

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Archives Official: IRS Didn’t Follow Law on Missing Emails

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Photo Credit: Getty/AFPThe IRS didn’t follow the law by failing to report it lost emails when former official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed, the top official at the National Archives told a House panel on Tuesday.

But those actions could have limited consequences for the agency.

U.S. Archivist David Ferriero cast the IRS’s email problems as part of a broader government issue at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, a point latched onto by Democrats.

The goal of the Archives in these situations, Ferriero also noted, is to “ensure that the circumstances that may have led to the loss of federal records are corrected and not repeated.”

“It’s not an enforcement statute,” Paul Wester, the Archives’ chief records officer, said about the Federal Records Act.

Read more from this story HERE.

Flashback: The Dog Also Ate The EPA’s E-mails Back In 2001(+video)

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Photo Credit: IJ Review By Kevin Boyd.

With the IRS email controversy in the news, this is as good a time as any to remind our readers that the IRS isn’t the only government agency that has deleted lost e-mails.

Back when the Bill Clinton administration was leaving town in 2001, some emails that the Landmark Legal Foundation was seeking from the EPA magically disappeared.

Sheryl Attkisson takes us down memory lane:

According to an Associated Press report, a federal judge has held the EPA in contempt for destroying computer files sought after by a conservative group: Landmark Legal Foundation. […]

Read more from this story HERE.

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Trey Gowdy Goes Off on IRS Commish for Claiming No Criminal Actions at IRS: ‘You Don’t Even Know What Statutes Are at Play’

By Pete Kasperowicz.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) late Monday criticized IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for claiming there’s no evidence of criminal misconduct at the IRS over the targeting scandal, even though he hasn’t bothered to examine the criminal code.

“You have already said multiple times today that there was no evidence that you found of any criminal wrongdoing,” Gowdy said. “I want you to tell me what criminal statutes you’ve evaluated.”

“I have not looked at any,” Koskinen replied.

“Well then how can you possibly tell our fellow citizens that there’s not criminal wrongdoing if you don’t even know what statutes to look at?” Gowdy shot back.

Koskinen said several times that he’s seen no evidence that anyone consciously acted inappropriately, but Gowdy said that’s not the same as trying to examine whether a crime was committed.

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‘We Have a Problem with You, and You Have a Problem Maintaining Your Credibility’: House Republicans Slam IRS Commissioner as They Subpoena a White House Lawyer in ‘Missing Emails’ Case

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Photo Credit: APRepublicans dropped a hammer on IRS Commissioner John Koskinen during a testy hearing covering the disappearance of emails tied to the agency’s tea party targeting scandal.

The emails, covering the period January 2009 to April 2011, belonged to embattled former official Lois Lerner and could shed light on whether an expansive scheme to single out conservative groups for special scrutiny was guided by members of Congress or administration officials outside the IRS.

‘The committee requested all of Lois Lerner’s emails over a year ago,’ said House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa. ‘And we subpoenaed the emails in August 2013 and again in February 2014. … You worked to cover up the fact they were missing and only came forward to fess up on a Friday afternoon after you had been caught red-handed.’

‘You personally did not cause the targeting,’ he told Koskinen, referring to the tea party scandal. ‘You personally did not destroy the emails. But by your actions and your deception, you now own this scandal.’

‘We have a problem with you,’ Issa sniped at the front end of a three-hour, 36-minute ordeal, ‘and you have a problem maintaining your credibility.’

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Why Darrell Issa Just Asked the IRS to Hand Over a Hard Drive

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Photo Credit: ThinkStockHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on Tuesday issued a subpoena to the Internal Revenue Service, ordering the agency to turn over the hard drive they claim is responsible for wiping out two years of critical email communications.

Issa has dramatically widened his probe into the IRS after the agency announced last week that it had lost the emails, which may have provided information about an IRS policy of targeting for extra scrutiny and delay many conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Issa is not only seeking emails, but wants equipment, “communication devices,” printed documents and just about anything else related to former IRS official Lois Lerner, who has refused to testify before Congress and who the GOP believes is a central player in the targeting scheme.

“After a year of beating down efforts by the Obama administration and its allies to obstruct an investigation into targeting, the IRS now says it lost perhaps the most critical evidence,” Issa said. “We still do not have answers about how and why the IRS tried to deceive Congress about these missing e-mails. This subpoena seeks those answers.”

This latest order comes a day after Issa suppoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to testify at an Oversight hearing on June 23.

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Sources: Lois Lerner’s Emails Likely Gone Forever

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Photo Credit: Getty Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources.

“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a brief hallway interview.

Two additional sources told POLITICO the same late Wednesday, citing IRS officials.

It may just be standard government procedure, but the revelation is significant because some lawmakers and observers thought there was a way that tech experts could revive Lerner’s emails after they were washed away in a computer crash in the summer of 2011. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), for example, subpoenaed her damaged hard drive earlier this week, when he asked for “all hard drives, external drives, thumb drives and computers” and “all electronic communication devices the IRS issued to Lois G. Lerner.”

“IT experts have weighed in and said yes — we can get those” emails, said Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) earlier Wednesday.

Read more from this story HERE.