Posted on 07/14/2014 6:44:42 PM PDT by smoothsailing
July 14, 2014
The Federal Election Commission recycled the computer hard drive of April Sands — a former co-worker of Lois Lerner’s — hindering an investigation into Sands’ partisan political activities, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Sands resigned from the Federal Election Commission in April after she admitted to violating the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in partisan political activities on federal time and at federal facilities.
The twist is that Sands also worked under Lois Lerner when the ex-IRS agent — who is currently embroiled in a scandal over the targeting of conservative political groups — worked at the FEC’s enforcement division.
In a letter to FEC chairman Lee Goodman, Oversight chairman Darrell Issa and committee member Jim Jordan laid out Sands’ partisan activities and asked for records pertaining to the recycling of her hard drive and of the agency’s records retention policies.
Sands took part in a heavily partisan online webcam discussion from FEC offices and also operated a Twitter account with the handle @ReignOfApril which were sent during Sands’ normal working hours.
One of Sands’ tweets, from June 4, 2012 read “I just don’t understand how anyone but straight white men can vote Republican. What kind of delusional rhetorical does one use?”
Sands is a black female.
“Dear every single Republican ever, When will U learn that Barack Hussein Obama is simply smarter than U? Stand down, Signed #Obama2012 #p2,” Sands wrote on May 1, 2012.
In a message fro Aug. 25, 2012, Sands called Republicans her “enemy.”
In others, Sands issued fundraising pleas on behalf of Obama. “Our #POTUS’s birthday is August 4. He’ll be 51. I’m donating $51 to give him the best birthday present ever: a second term,” she wrote on July 18, 2012.
“The bias in these messages is striking, especially for an attorney charged with the responsibility to enforce federal election laws fairly and dispassionately,” read the Oversight letter to Goodman, an Obama appointee.
The FEC’s Office of Inspector General sought to conduct a criminal investigation into Sands’ activities but were stymied when they found that the agency had recycled her computer hard drive.
“Therefore the OIG was unable to show that Ms. Sands’ solicitations and political activity were done from an FEC computer,” reads the letter.
Because of this, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined criminal prosecution.
“The FEC’s failure to retain Ms. Sands’ hard drive prevented the FEC OIG from fully pursuing appropriate criminal sanctions for Ms. Sands’ admitted violation of federal law,” wrote Issa and Jordan.
“Like the IRS’s destruction of Lois Lerner’s hard drive, the FEC’s recycling of Ms. Sands’ hard drive may have also destroyed material responsive to Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight requests,” the letter continued.
Lerner’s computer hard drive crashed in the middle of 2011, right around the time that questions were being raised over whether the IRS’s enforcement agency was targeting conservative non-profit groups while considering whether to grant them tax-exempt status.
News of the loss of Lerner’s emails was only made public last month, much to the frustration of Issa and the Oversight Committee.
Though it is unclear whether Sands and Lerner communicated after Lerner’s move to the FEC, the Oversight Committee letter points out that Lerner was known to have communicated with other FEC employees after her switch. That correspondence included the sharing of information protected by section 6103 of the tax code, the letter notes.
Don't know why it's taking so long to come up with an ironclad alibi for all these crashed hard drives and missing emails. It's patently obvious:
The computer used by 'Typhoid Lois' was compromised with an undetectable rootkit that sent out a hard drive-killing virus to EVERYONE with whom she exchanged email. Once infected, it was imperative that these drives be 'recycled' at the nearest grocery store bottle & can return machine in order to offset sequester losses caused by the evil Republicans.
It wouldn't have happened had not Ted Cruz shut down the gubbermint.
Besides, it's Bush's fault...
No, She's wrong. Republicans are the friends that dictocrats can have. They both have a common enemy called the Tea Party.
nope, not a smidgen of illegality here at the IRS.???
It’s really like they use a box of 3x5 cards for all their work and if they lose the box, they’re done.
Gotta start all over.
Continuity, Disaster Recovery, ISO 9000, etc are instituted throughout large organizations.
Otherwise they’d never be able to work on large projects.
Here’s how this scam could work with Microsoft Exchange. Set the users mailbox up to have very limited server storage, say 100MB. Implement a retention policy on the mailbox so that any messages (in all folders) over 10 days old in the server mailbox are deleted. To save any email history, the user would have to archive to a pst file on their desktop. From there, if a user needs to lose some email, it’s a pretty short journey to destruction. By the time an investigation commences, hearings are held, subpoenas are issued, etc., emails are long gone, even from tape backup if the policy is designed so. That so many disk drives have been recycled isn’t a coincidence, it’s standard operating procedure.
Much better to be busted for incompetent document retention than for wielding the FEC or IRS as a political weapon.
Next we are going to tell us that a virus got into the system and destroyed all the records, except those when they decide to go on an IRS witch hunt.
LOL - you see liberals as they really are... you're a man of few illusions...
There isn't a single agency that isn't corrupt. NOT ONE!
The question has NEVER been asked if they have lost ANY taxpayers information. I’m sure they have backups and archives all the way back to the epoch.
They can pull that sh!t up in an instant if they want too.
If I’m ever audited this is my defense:
All of my tax documents were scanned and uploaded to the IRS. Don’t have it? I guess your hard drive crashed again. Seems to happen a lot over there anyway.
marker
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.