Posted on 07/21/2014 5:18:23 PM PDT by mandaladon
A top IRS official is now uncertain about whether backup tapes of the lost Lois Lerner emails may exist, according to testimony released by Republicans — a potentially significant plot twist in the controversy that has shaken the IRS in recent weeks.
IRS Deputy Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane, who oversees the tax-collecting agency’s document production to Congress, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in private testimony that he’s now unsure whether all the backup tapes with correspondence from the ex-IRS official were recycled.
“I don’t know if there is a backup tape with information on it or there isn’t,” he told investigators Thursday, according to a partial transcript released by Republicans on the committee Monday.
The IRS official suggested new information has come to light since the IRS revealed in a June 13 letter to Congress that two years of Lerner emails were lost in a 2011 computer crash. Lerner was the head of the tax-exempt division that singled out conservative groups for additional scrutiny and since has become a lightning rod for Republicans probing the matter.
The IRS had said no copies of Lerner’s correspondence were available because the agency at the time backed up emails for only six months on tapes — then recycled the tapes for reuse, essentially erasing the data. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen also testified to the matter before lawmakers.
Kane suggested that might not be the case.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The big wild card here is the Z Street civil case because it was filed in 2010, well before Congressional investigations started up.
This case invalidates all of the IRS weasel arguments because every document that has gone missing would be responsive to court ordered discovery in the law suit against the IRS and thus should have been preserved under court mandated litigation holds that trump any phony baloney IRS gaming of back up data .
Lerner’s e mail back ups reside in her lawyer’s secure vault were the rest of his sensitive attorney -client protected information is kept under lock and key
It is certain that those emails exist somewhere. That is the nature of nets- inter and intra. It is not certain that they will be seen by any actual investigators any time soon.
Immunity from prosecution does not confer immunity from Fort Marcy Park.
The thing is, executive orders can’t restore her pension nor can it restore the 25% budget cut that congress is imposing.
Oh I know they are lying, absolutely, I’m just saying this excuse they are giving is so insanely ridiculous. What they are saying is the server crashed, well how does that delete the emails? It’s a ridiculous excuse. What do they mean by crashed? It locked up and rebooted and by some miracle the HD reformatted or was vaporized?
If the server crashed it would eliminate ALL e-mails on that server. Now lets move on to the cloud network which houses ALL data through-out the nation.
Oh hell no, lets not go there. Before you know it, Apple, Microsoft, T5 and the rest are all under scrutiny all because one bitch at the IRS had a terminal HD fail.
Good Grief.
Obama, your version of transparency is quite spooky indeed!
Yes that IS a big 800lb. gorilla in the room.
Does the IRS REALLY want to claim that EVERYONE'S computer crashed?
Plus I've always been confused about the people TARGETED by the IRS.
You know, all of those conservative groups.
Don't they have names of EVERY SINGLE PERSON who audited them/denied tax-exempt status?
Must be thousands of emails and hard copies out there from the victims.
Apparently you are to believe that when you send an e-mail you have the only record of it.
This is what a libtard with any knowledge cannot defend.
This is what the official response of the IRS is.
The time in near to go 100 million strong and stop the IRS.
Obama & minions “will not rest” [sic] until the trail is as cold as the former IRS head ....
I bet a Patriot computer geek found them, and is now threatening to release them.
“It is certain that those emails exist somewhere. That is the nature of nets- inter and intra. It is not certain that they will be seen by any actual investigators any time soon.”
What is astonishing is that not one person on the receiving or sending end of the emails has produced copies. To make that happen some pretty serious scrubbing and threatening had to occur.
Tape is very cheap. This is very, very strange.
Yeah but it’s IRS policy that all emails be saved so if the server crashed it wouldn’t matter. The HD where they store the emails should still have them. And if that HD crashed, how would that delete all emails unless it the HD was formatted or destroyed? What they are saying is insane. This is the IRS which houses the tax data of 100s of millions of people going back umpteen years and if you make a slight mistake on your tax return they are on your butt in a nano-second especially if you are a Republican.
Look a squirrel!
They’re feeling the heat.
I had in the past called Hillary Clinton the “Queen of Diamonds”. I was wrong. Valerie Jarrett is the Queen of Diamonds.
Didn't tape for computing stop being used in the 1990's?
Ha ha! Roughly 1980.
My dad used to write computer manuals in the 60's.
He would talk about what a big deal it was when they stopped using "tapes" to record data.
It was "nice" to not use reel to real back then.
Lois Lerner perhaps hasn't heard the terms "disc drives", or "servers" or "mainframes".
Jeez. I WISH the IRS "didn't know" what my tax returns were for the past 40 years.
Guess I'm due for a substantial refund, plus interest.
Lost the data? Oh, so sorry.
Sucks to be the IRS, huh?
Go back and check the "tapes".
Even better, check the punch cards.
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.