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IRS commissioner tells Congress the agency owes no apologies
Hotair ^ | 06/20/2014 | Ed Morrissey

Posted on 06/20/2014 12:41:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

Really? Not even just a little bit, just to say, “Sorry about the whole not-retaining-our-records-when-we-demand-that-you-do” sort of thing? IRS Commissioner John Koskinen asserted that the IRS owes no apologies for the curious epidemic of hard-drive failures among officials involved in the targeting scheme, whose e-mails Congress has spent the last year-plus demanding from the IRS:

CAMP: What I didn’t hear in that was an apology to this committee.

KOSKINEN: I don’t think an apology is owed. There are not a single e-mail has been lost since the start of this investigation. Every e-mail has been preserved that we have. WE have produced or will produce by the end of this –

CAMP: You don’t think the time period between January 2009 and April 2011 is relevant to this investigation?

Note well that smirk on Koskinen’s face as he proclaims this, too. We’ll get back to the qualifier Koskinen uses in a moment. Katie Pavlich followed the hearing and reported the exchange on Twitter:

"What I didn't hear in that statement is an apology to this Committee" -Chairman Camp #IRS

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 20, 2014

"I don't think an apology is owed" -Koskinen #IRS. Wow.

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) June 20, 2014

Fox had more:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Friday there is no need for his agency to apologize amid accusations of a cover-up in the targeting scandal of conservative groups after claims surfaced that ex-official Lois Lerner’s hard drive was destroyed and emails from several other officials also have gone missing. …

Committee Republicans now say that the IRS may have known about this for months, and that the agency may have lost emails from another six employees.

“The IRS in charge of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ information. And you’re now saying your technology system was so poor that years’ worth of emails are forever unrecoverable?” Camp charged. “How does that put anyone at ease? How far would the excuse ‘I lost it’ get with the IRS for an average American trying to file their yearly taxes who may have lost a few receipts.”

Read Noah’s post for a litany of reasons why the IRS owes the American public an apology. They may owe one to Orrin Hatch as well. He met with Koskinen on Monday to discuss the sudden revelation of the hard-drive crash in Lois Lerner’s computer, and now says that Koskinen never mentioned during that conversation that six other drives had been similarly destroyed:

Hatch fired off a letter to Koskinen on Thursday voicing concerns that he met with him on Monday, yet the commissioner and his staff did not mention that emails from six other employees might be missing.

Koskinen’s still not sure how many e-mails are missing, either:

The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service refused to apologize to Congress for losing e-mails related to its targeting of conservative groups, saying it’s still attempting to recover the data and it’s too soon to know how many e-mails are missing.

“I don’t think an apology is owed,” Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways and Means Committee. “Every e-mail has been preserved that we have.”

Translation: We’ve dutifully saved everything that we, er, saved. Does that fly in a tax audit? I’d bet that smirk wouldn’t. Don’t be surprised if this declaration becomes a hot topic in Monday’s Oversight hearing.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: emails; irs; loislerner; teaparty
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To: SeekAndFind

I wonder if anyone has thought acquire the current hard drives of all those computers that supposedly crashed and verify their first use and that there are no files previous to the crash?


41 posted on 06/20/2014 1:23:31 PM PDT by dmet
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To: SeekAndFind
Here's an incentive for the K-man.

In an audit one is presumed to be guilty until proven innocent, right?

Perhaps the Committee can just consider All participants in this scheme guilty until they can prove they are innocent. Just consider them all convicted and....

(1) Ineligible for compensation, bonuses, or retirement of any kind.

(2) Incarcerate them all until such a time as they can be proven innocent. Make them share space with illegals at a de-commissioned military base - or there's always Club Gitmo (I understand there are 5 cells there that have just become available recently.)

Coughing up their "lost" emails would be a real fine place to start if they hope for acquittal.

Gazing up from that metal slab that passes for a bed in the klink, one would at least think they'd be incentivized to look for those emails don't you think?

FReegards!

 photo million-vet-march.jpg

42 posted on 06/20/2014 1:26:26 PM PDT by Agamemnon (Darwinism is the glue that holds liberalism together)
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To: Agamemnon

RE: In an audit one is presumed to be guilty until proven innocent, right?

Yes, especially if you are being audited by the IRS.


43 posted on 06/20/2014 1:28:33 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

I agree he owes no apologies.

But he, and every other person involved in this scandal, owes the taxpayers a pound of flesh.

The crows can have the rest of him.


44 posted on 06/20/2014 1:30:28 PM PDT by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: SeekAndFind

It has to make one wonder if anyone in the IRS has “mysteriously” had a fatal fall, car accident, gone missing, etc. since this scandal broke?

You know, someone with knowledge (i.e., a potential whistleblower) that couldn’t be trusted?

Think about it…..


45 posted on 06/20/2014 1:35:09 PM PDT by Kevin in California
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To: All

That must be because he and the whole IRS truely need to be decimated.

Look it up, a legion was lined up and every 10th person...


46 posted on 06/20/2014 1:35:38 PM PDT by veracious
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To: SeekAndFind

See this is what happens when Congressional Republicans surrender to Obama the agencies they oversee don’t see them as overseerers to be feared.


47 posted on 06/20/2014 2:18:10 PM PDT by RginTN
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To: veracious
Sorry, my FRiend, but, while you are absolutely correct in your usage of 'decimated', it is not the proper word for the remedy for this problem. Decimation would perforce include the firings of some number of low-level flunkies, which, aside from likely being unjust to the flunky, would very distinctly be a pointless exercise; flunkies are infinitely replaceable.

The correct word is 'decapitated'. Not in the sense of the literal cutting off of heads, but rather in the sense of removal of ALL the top bureaucrats, however many that may be. Decapitation, here, has several particular advantages.

First, decapitation guarantees, effectively, that ALL the malefactors with any decision-making power in an organisation will be removed.

Second, post-decapitation, some number of underlings, now no longer under threat of retaliation from their bosses, will step forward -- even voluntarily, I should imagine -- and provide information necessary to the further cleaning up of the organisation in question.

Third, with a proper offer, to wit, "Hey, you fired a&&hole, want your job back?. Okay, come forward under oath and spill your guts.", even more information necessary to further clean-up will be garnered.

Fourth, other senior bureaucrats throughout the goobermint will unquestionably get the message more or less immediately that their, er, 'improved' behaviour is now imperatively important to their careers.

Fifth, the gross reduction of personnel accomplished by decapitation cannot but reduce overall goobermint spending. If accompanied by other measures, this reduction might become quite sizeable.

Sixth, decapitation will require some number of Senate confirmations, wherein (presumably, but certainly not a given considering the GOPe) proper and detailed vetting of nominees will be performed. No guarantee of success in keeping out new scumbags here, but at least it is a legitimate shot, and a net improvement in lowering the level of general scumbaggery in the organisation can hardly be avoided.

FReegards!

48 posted on 06/20/2014 2:23:38 PM PDT by SAJ
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To: SeekAndFind
Yeah, right.
Whatever Smirking Pissant Koskinen says.
49 posted on 06/23/2014 3:31:06 AM PDT by Amagi (Lenin: "Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.")
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