Posted on 09/17/2014 3:12:32 PM PDT by Bubba_Leroy
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) commissioner John Koskinen testified Wednesday that the IRS did not save any of the information on Lois Lerner’s destroyed Blackberry and that there is no outside system to store agency emails.
“Hard drive crashes continue as we speak,” Koskinen admitted at a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing when asked if any computers had recently crashed under his watch.
Koskinen admitted that destroying records would be an act “not consistent with the law,” but maintained that there’s no evidence that the IRS intentionally destroyed records.
“Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry was replaced in February 2012 as part of an ongoing Blackberry update….it was disposed of under standard procedures at that time,” Koskinen said.
Koskinen claimed that information from Lerner’s Blackberry could not be transferred to her new model because “Our Blackberries only display email that is displayed by our employees’ Microsoft Outlook emails, which is maintained on IRS servers.”
Koskinen also said that there’s no outside system to save IRS employees’ emails.
“There is no system outside the IRS, government or otherwise, that the IRS uses to back up or store emails,” Koskinen said.
Koskinen didn’t mention that the IRS terminated its years-long contract with its email archiving company Sonasoft shortly after Lerner’s computer crashed.
“It is not clear that there are backup tapes that have any information on them,” Koskinen said. “I never said they disappeared, I said they were recycled.”
But the IRS could have easily saved all records, information, and history on Lois Lerner’s Blackberry, according to a Blackberry user guide.
“If you have installed the BlackBerry® Desktop Software on your computer, you can back up and restore most of your BlackBerry smartphone data, including messages, organizer data, fonts, saved searches, and browser bookmarks using the BlackBerry Desktop Software. For more information, see the Help in the BlackBerry Desktop Software,” according to Blackberry.
“If your email account uses a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, you might be able to restore synchronized organizer data to your smartphone over the wireless network. To restore synchronized organizer data over the wireless network, you must have an activation password. For more information, contact your administrator,” the Blackberry manual continues.
Koskinen said that if the agency destroyed records then “that was an act not consistent with the law” but said, “There’s no evidence that there were records destroyed.”
Koskinen also admitted that IRS employees routinely use personal email accounts to conduct agency business but maintained that “they do it inadvertently.”
It is really amazing. Every time you ask for another IRS employee's e-mail his hard drive crashes. You need to stop asking.
“There’s no evidence that there were records destroyed.”
“I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, there's no way you can prove anything!”
Would it be wrong if everybody used this excuse when the IRS comes after them?
“I have no idea what my income is. All my information was on my computer. No backup. So sorry”
THE HARD DRIVES ARE CRASHING
THE HARD DRIVES ARE CRASHING
I wouldn’t be surprised if Koskinin’s hard drive
crashed in the immediate future and no information
could be recovered from his cooling corpse.
We could save Billion$ by not asking. Each time we axe it, it costs us thousands in replacement hard drives and more lawyer time in House hearings. By not axing (TM), we could even make a dent in the deficit!
The first honest thing he's said.
"If you want a full list of the hard drives that will crash in the near future, simply tell me who's drives you are planning to subpoena. Those are the ones."
Which drives crash depend upon the arriving
Duces Temens with the subpoena.
Issa and Cummings will continue to destroy
America as the Law is pushed further into the ground,
as they delay, delay, delay, and the murders
and fraud and felonies continue.
What do they care? THEY ARE EXEMPT.
I guess for once president BullCrap wasn’t lying when he claimed there isn’t one smidgeon of evidence..... (That we’ll ever allow you to find)
Koskinen needs to be under a jail.
It is time for BIG GOVT Inc. to take some of that stimulus money and send some IT Professionals to the IRS to get some decent computer support. Obviously they have nobody supporting their computer systems. Just think of all of the audits that will not happen because their audit spreadsheets get wiped out!!! /SARC
Actually he needs to order all computers turned off until they can be backed up to a remote system.
Failure to do this should cost him his job.
“Hard drive crashes continue as we speak,” Of course they do, but professional systems warn of upcoming failure and back up accordingly.
My hdd crashed recently and all of my tax data went with it.
I’m sure the IRS will understand.
Isn’t it fortunate for the IRS that only computers used by administrators are suffering an abnormally high rate of hard drive failures?
The computers used by agents that collect taxes and perform audits seem to be holding up much better.
/s
I am convinced this leads right back up to the POTUS. Too many coincidental uh ohs.
Ebola has evolved and the digital strain is now attacking IRS computers.
Because the order to destroy records was kept on the .... wait for it ... hard disk.
Just imagine if the IRS's internal payroll records were kept on as unreliable of hard disks. "I'm sorry, but no paychecks again this week. Another hard disk crashed and someone stuck the backup tape to the office refrigerator with a magnet."
Naturally. They destroyed it.
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