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Forty-one years ago, during a small and largely ignored government scandal, a great mystery occurred. A group of determined congressional investigators, who had learned the president of the United States was running a voice-activated taping system in the Oval Office, pressed to get their hands on the tapes. The courts ruled in their favor. The White House had to hand over a number of tapes. But it turned out one of them, which was understood by the timeline to potentially be the key one, the one that might reveal exactly how the scandal began, turned out to have an 18½-minute...

[SNIP]...This section of Discover The Networks provides a timeline of this illegal, blatantly partisan practice by the IRS.

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.” This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’ But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) cancelled its longtime relationship with an email-storage contractor just weeks after ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer crashed and shortly before other IRS officials’ computers allegedly crashed. The IRS signed a contract with Sonasoft, an email-archiving company based in San Jose, California, each year from 2005 to 2010. The company, which partners with Microsoft and counts The New York Times among its clients, claims in its company slogans that it provides “Email Archiving Done Right” and “Point-Click Recovery.” Sonasoft in 2009 tweeted, “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose...

A picture is worth a thousand words: This is pretty much how Lois Lerner has conducted herself throughout the investigation of the IRS scandal. Photo: Post composite graphic

The timing is not merely suspicious, it is damning. [T]he alleged disappearance of Ms. Lerner's hard drive—and the fact that the missing conversations are those the former IRS director had with people outside the IRS—has suddenly resurrected, with force, the explosive possibility that she was chatting with Democrats who mattered. There's plenty of reason to believe she was. Just last week Congress discovered (via a subpoena to the Justice Department) emails showing that Ms. Lerner had conversations with Justice prosecutors about investigating conservative nonprofits. Who else in the Obama administration was Ms. Lerner talking to? I'm omitting all of the...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it can't provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested by congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes. The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months, and employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives. The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for "automatic data processing services." Sonasoft's motto is "email archiving done right," and the company lists the IRS as...

According to a report published late last night in POLITICO, the hard drive belonging to Lois Lerner where the IRS claims her emails to outside agencies and groups like the White House, Department of Justice, FEC, Democrat members of Congress, etc. were stored has been...destroyed. 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...

. June 18, 2014 Newt Gingrich We are watching the most significant crisis of constitutional order since Watergate, the last time an administration broke the law deliberately and repeatedly. And none of the current cases look more Nixonian than what has been happening at the IRS. Thirteen months ago, President Obama stood before the American people, acknowledged that the IRS had “improperly screened conservative groups,” and promised to get to the bottom of the matter and to “hold the responsible parties accountable.” “It’s inexcusable,” he said, “and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about...

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...

<p>WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday it has found no emails between any person in the executive office of the president and a top Internal Revenue Service official who has been connected to the improper scrutiny of political groups. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the White House searched for all communications between the former IRS official, Lois Lerner, and executive office personnel. "We found zero emails," he said.</p>

Despite growing outrage over the mysterious disappearance of former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner’s emails, the new White House press secretary sees nothing wrong with the government’s inadequate explanation. “I think it’s entirely reasonable. And it’s fact,” incoming spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, according to CNN. “You’ve never heard of a computer crashing before?” The IRS admits that it can’t find two years’ of emails requested during the time tea party activists claim they were targeted. Even CNN anchor John King found the explanation unbelievable. “Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?” he...

Friday’s revelation that the IRS “lost” Lois Lerner’s emails in a computer crash came ten months after Congress first requested them and seven months after they were first subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. But what IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified about the emails at a hearing in March appears to be at odds with his agency’s newer reported claims that the emails are irretrievable. Under questioning by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on the House Oversight Committee, Koskinen said IRS emails “get taken off and stored in servers.” That was part of the reason, he said, it was so difficult...

In a SHOCKING discovery, CGI Federal – the Canadian Company that built the Obamacare website – appears to have a connection to the “Innocence of Muslims” video the Obama administration blamed for the Benghazi attacks.And here’s how it was done:The evidence is well established that in 2010, CGI acquired Stanley Associates, which “provides services to the U.S. federal civilian, defense and intelligence agencies”. [1]When the crudely produced video “Innocence of Muslims” was posted to a YouTube it needed a boost, especially since it was posted by someone no one had ever heard of and who had only uploaded two videos...

Eight weeks after police reopened the investigation into Ashley Fallis’ 2012 death, there are more questions and new accusations of misconduct concerning the Evans Police Department.snip“They will do whatever it takes to solve a crime the way they want to solve it,” said the former officer. “If you complain and tell the truth against the culture you’re retaliated against. If you’re asked questions and if you’re caught at something you deny, deny, deny."

A two-star U.S. Army general will begin investigating this week how and why Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left his base in Afghanistan, resulting in his capture, a senior defense official said. Bergdahl spent five years in captivity until his release May 31, in exchange for five Taliban figures being held at a U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl, 28, returned to the United States -- specifically to an Army medical facility in San Antonio, Texas -- early Friday. Though the investigation begins this week, it's not known when the sergeant will undergo formal questioning. The senior defense...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is back in America, but it will be months before his future takes shape, according to both experts in the military's legal system and people familiar with the treatment of long-term captives. After nearly five years in the hands of the Taliban and Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the American soldier was exchanged for five top Taliban operatives, underwent medical and psychological treatment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and, Friday morning, landed at a military base in San Antonio. There he will undergo treatment to reintegrate back into society -- or possibly military...

HAILEY, Idaho — An Idaho county commissioner held a press conference in the hometown of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl this week to tell reporters and outsiders to leave the town and the Bergdahl family alone. The Times-News reported that Blaine County Commissioner Larry Schoen said people should stop attacking Bergdahl, his family and the people of Hailey for standing by the former prisoner of war. Schoen said the town only wanted to see the local man reunited with his parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, after spending five years as a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan....

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, the IRS has "lost" two years of emails belonging to former head of tax exempt organizations Lois Lerner. The IRS doesn't have a record of her emails to outside groups or government agencies from January 2009 through April 2011, conveniently encompassing some of the same time when tea party groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution. The IRS says the loss of emails is due to a "computer crash" and claims emails from or to Lerner from the White House, Democratic members of Congress, the Treasury Department, FEC...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claimed Friday that it cannot produce Lois Lerner’s emails to and from the White House and other administration departments due to a supposed computer crash. The IRS previously agreed to hand over all of the ex-IRS official’s emails from 2009 to 2011 to the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Camp. But the IRS claimed Friday that it has Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS officials but it cannot produce emails to and from the Treasury and Justice Departments, the Federal Election Commission, or Democratic offices. The IRS’ computer crash may...