Posted on 06/16/2014 10:50:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last Friday afternoon, the Internal Revenue Service claimed that Lois Lerner, a former executive tasked with overseeing tax-exemption applications, lost thousands of emails after her computer crashed. Many of those emails, the tax collection agency claimed, could not be recovered.
This convenient excuse for failing to comply with a request from House investigators is not sitting well with some in the journalistic community.
“Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?” CNN’s John King asked his panel of political reporters on Monday. “Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner’s emails suddenly went ‘poof?’”
King added that he agreed with Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) who said that it was “unacceptable” that this information was just coming to light now, over a year after the investigation into allegations that the IRS targeted conservative political groups with undue scrutiny began.
“Waiting a year to tell the Congress makes me suspicious,” King said.
“It’s hard to believe in this era, where you have servers, and backup servers, and all kinds of technology that can recover all kinds of emails, that these emails simply don’t exist,” Associated Press reporter Julie Pace agreed. “If that is true, and they don’t exist, why wasn’t that one of the first things that was told to Congress?”
“I’m not sure what’s with this administration and computer problems, but it seems to be happening time and again,” Politico’s Manu Raju concurred.
It seems that even those predisposed to extend federal officials the benefit of the doubt are not accepting the claim that Lerner’s emails simply disappeared into thin air at face value.
In a sardonic segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough ruthlessly mocked the notion that a hardware crash could eliminate files stored on remote servers.
“Mika, even you have to admit this is pretty ridiculous,” Scarborough probed.
“Pretty ridiculous,” Brzezinski replied. “Those emails exist.”
Perhaps made uncomfortable by the implications surrounding this admission, Brzezinski quickly changed topics. It would, however, be shameful if the American political press did the same. The concession from these prominent political reporters and commentators serves as a mandate to pursue the story surrounding the IRS scandal with renewed vigor.
And those who are scratching the surface of this story are unsettled by what they are finding. In March, as Townhall’s Guy Benson noted on Monday, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before Congress that all the relevant email communications are “stored somewhere” on severs.
This development in a controversy which President Barack Obama called a “phony scandal” at an agency were he insisted there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” provides reporters with the clearest indication yet that the president was either not being truthful or had been misled.
So, which is it?
The dog ate her emails.
I don't see anyone doing anything to Lois or anyone else
Well, no one possessing even a nodding acquaintance with the IT industry is buying it. At this point it’s simply insulting.
Yeah, and I bet Ed Snowden has a backup copy ;-)
Whe Obama holds all the “Get out of jail free” cards in the form of presidential pardons and a pet Justice Department, they CAN get away with anything.
This!
What he should have said is that it's a phony scandal because there is not a smidgen of proof of corruption anymore.
Can you name ANYONE on the inside of this coup who's been held accountable or paid any price for their crimes?
Lerner will be charged with failure to properly manage her emails since the rule says:
“If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly,”
Plus, this was not during the course of her “daily work”. Trying to shut down political opposition falls under “other work”.
Well that goes without saying.
They (and We) are all in denial of what we are seeing right before our eyes.
And, whatever they do, how about doing it NEXT WEEK instead of next year?
NEXT WEEK
What does the NSA’s Meta data reveal?
Have to send US Marshals over there to confiscate ALL tax paperwork. Let the IRS come to a screeching halt. Bury them in litigation.
Those emails are lost now. Why do you think the IRS waited over a year to say these emails are lost? Because it took a year for the administration’s hackers and tech geeks to weed out every trace of Lerner’s emails. The NSA servers, the IRS servers, all replies, CCs, Bccs, backups, external servers, other computers take time to find and wipe out. The NSA can snoop and find every single piece of digital information and store it on their servers. They can just as easily use the same technology to wipe out digital traces of info.
Next week? No. They should act today! Their constant delay proves their complicity.
The shriveled up old marxist hag lied.
There’s definitely a way those servers are wiped. They had over a year to do it.
my 75 year old mother has better IT practices then the IRS?
yea, sure.... I believe that
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