Sources: Lois Lerner’s emails likely gone forever

Politico.com ^ | 6/18/14 | RACHAEL BADE

[hole_n_one]

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,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, in a brief hallway interview.

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

(Also on POLITICO: White House hits back in IRS flap)

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. Oversight 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.

The latest news suggests such professionals may never get the chance to try again — and the IRS has said even its criminal investigators who specialize in rebuilding hard drives to recover hidden information from criminals were unable to restore the data back in 2011. But this is only likely to further enrage Republicans, who are fuming over the matter and suspect Washington officials drove the selective scrutiny.

[haywoodwebb]

"I wonder if Snowden has a copy."

I've been hopeful that someone like that will come up with these documents at some point.


I'm sure it will be too late, though...

[Pollster1]

We should take the IRS at their word: They are so abysmally incompetent that they store the congressionally-mandated archival copies of email on the sender’s hard drive.

Given that shockingly low level of information security, the organization should be abolished. We should abolish the income tax immediately (collect delinquent taxes and half-year 2014 taxes, but no income tax after that) and replace it with a national sales tax starting July 1, 2014. If they are not willing to follow written law, they should be written out of the law.

[dljordan]

Felonies piled on top of felonies. You or I would have had the full weight of the FedGov brought down on us with the resulting jail time and financial ruin.

[DouglasKC]

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

How about someone tell this idiot what to say??? How about "They may have thrown away Louis Lerners hardware but everyone KNOWS that the emails aren't stored on her hard drive and we're going to dig and investigate until we get them or until we arrest someone."

[CyberAnt]

Here’s a better one:

Yesterday’s Flower Children
Today’s Blooming Idiots

[Delta Dawn]

Believe me, Tommy has no idea how one would permanently delete a person’s emails.