[rarestia]

As an IT engineer for the last 20 years, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I would lose my job if I could not produce an archive from the last 7 years. I’m allowed to take a few days to produce, as we often have to send away for tapes from Iron Mountain; but that data is understood to be recoverable. We’ve been able to go as far back as 10 years in some rare instances if tapes were not overwritten or were archived with scratch tapes.

This business about the government not being able to produce documents from just 6 months to 1 year ago is absolute bunk and borders on criminal withholding of evidence.

[Morpheus2009]

In other words obstruction of justice.

[Carriage Hill]

“...borders on criminal withholding of evidence.”

I think they crossed that line.

[dirtboy]

The entire incident reeks of an orchestrated effort to age the emails off backup. The IRS got rid of its email archival process and then diddled and dallied until well after the six month backup cycle window was closed.

All that was needed to be done to preserve the emails was to pull one set of full backups once the subpeona was received and replace the set with fresh tapes. There were many things that could have been done, but weren't. For what appears to be obvious reasons.

[cuban leaf]

Same here. 32 years.

This whole thing would be laughable if it was not so serious. This isn’t saying “my dog ate my homework.” It’s saying “My goldfish ate my homework.”

[Maceman]

This business about the government not being able to produce documents from just 6 months to 1 year ago is absolute bunk and borders on criminal withholding of evidence.

You are mistaken, Citizen. Since the government defines what is and isn't criminal, nothing is criminal unless the government says it is.