Posted on 07/31/2015 12:59:57 PM PDT by jazusamo
There have been dozens of questions surrounding the disappearance of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the IRS targeting scandal. Some of Lerner's emails have been recovered, after IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said under oath they were lost forever. Thousands are still missing. But perhaps the most compelling questions that have been asked since the IRS targeting scandal broke in May 2013 are 1) Exactly where were Lerner's emails and backup tapes destroyed? 2) Who destroyed them?
Now, we have an answer. According to Americans for Tax Reform,Lerner's hard drive was destroyed by the IRS "Midnight Unit" in West Virginia:
Backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 Lois Lerner emails were destroyed by an IRS entity officially known as the "Media Management Midnight Unit" located in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to documentation released this week by the House Oversight Committee. In all, 422 backup tapes holding the emails were magnetically "degaussed" despite an agency-wide preservation order and congressional subpoena. Degaussing is a process whereby powerful magnets are used to erase data on a storage tape.
The preservation order came from IRS Chief Technology Officer Terence Millholland in response to Congressional subpoenas over Lois Lerner's emails. However, the agency completely failed to ensure the order was followed or understood. According to the House Oversight report:
-"The IRS failed to ensure compliance with the preservation order at each turn. The IRS failed to confirm compliance with the preservation order in February 2014, upon learning of the gap in emails; failed to ensure the Media Management Midnight Unit, the team that destroyed the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order; and failed to make certain that individuals who ordered the destruction of the specific media, in this instance the backup tapes, properly understood the preservation order."
Keep in mind Lerner's hard drive didn't simply "crash" on its own, but instead had physical damage. According to one Treasury Inspector General, the hard drive likely crashed due to "an impact of some sort." The question is who damaged the hard drive and whether it was done on purpose to destroy evidence.
New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner's hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.
The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk."
Earlier this week a federal judge threatened to "haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt," for ignoring court orders and refusing to turn over emails belonging to Lerner by deadline.
IRS Midnight Unit sounds like Hitler’s Brown shirts.
Kneel! Kneel before your government employee gods, you filthy taxpayers!
Provide them with offerings of bribes and bonuses lest they put the IRS after you!
Exactly, and it’s difficult to understand why they’d even name a unit that because of the implications.
Had an order and Subpoena come from anyone in most any Court in America to a mere mortal in Workplace U.S.A. there would be people in Jail already for tampering/destruction of evidence, violation of a Judicial Order and ignoring a Subpoena.
Every one of the Employees working the Midnight Basketball shift at the IRS should be in jail now!
Ignorance is NOT a defense in the courts.
The head of the Media Management Unit committed a felony, and should be on his way to prison.
As should Lois herself.
You don’t accidently take a hammer to your hard drive, and you don’t accidently de-gausse back-ups.
“Barack Hussein Soetoro has singlehandedly destroyed the integrity of the government of the United States.”
I know what you’re saying but he’s had a LOT of help - from his own circle AND the current RINOS who REFUSE to do anything about it, except to assist HIM and join his fight against we stupid yokels.
Stop threatening and DO SOMETHING!”
That’s the face of corruption isn’t it?
There’s another thread on Hillary’s e-mails where Hillary stares straight into the camera, really giving it the old, evil stink-eye.
Why aren’t these crooks in prison? Ferris? Trey? Darrell?
What they are protecting is communications between Lerner and someone in the white house. That someone from this regime was conspiring with Lerner to target conservative groups. It's plain that that is what they are hiding and ridiculous to think they are going to all this to hide anything else. We can't get into the white house servers to get the evidence.
He's done far more than anyone else. But, if you think back to the Clinton years, politicization of the judiciary and the DOJ attorneys was taken to what was then a new level.
Obama has taken this politicization to new levels. Part of the reason is that the Democrat lawmakers and the Dem client/supporters are practically Communists now, and that the degeneration of the LIVs' education and information is much further along.
Yup - they threw Martha Stewart up under the jailhouse for less.
It’s difficult to physically damage a hard drive.
The most effective way I’ve found is to put them in a log splitter.
Hillary has that same vacant stare when confronted with the truth.
Sounds like a plan!
Since the Rats have completely infiltrated and taken over the .gov bureaucracy, and with the MSM in their back pocket, they know they can do anything they want and get away with it.
There is no penalty here, and no one will be fired, much less go to prison.
Sorry, but that’s the truth.
They understood their orders, whether told directly or implied.
Erased the Backup? They did what the Democrats wanted them to do.
So, when do the RICO prosecutions start? This ought to be much more fruitful than any Mafia prosecution.
“Spoliation of evidence” is a crime!!!
Per Wiki:
The spoliation of evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding. Spoliation has two possible consequences: in jurisdictions where the (intentional) act is criminal by statute, it may result in fines and incarceration (if convicted in a separate criminal proceeding) for the parties who engaged in the spoliation; in jurisdictions where relevant case law precedent has been established, proceedings possibly altered by spoliation may be interpreted under a spoliation inference, or by other corrective measures, depending on the jurisdiction.
The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party’s destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.
The theory of the spoliation inference is that when a party destroys evidence, it may be reasonable to infer that the party had “consciousness of guilt” or other motivation to avoid the evidence. Therefore, the factfinder may conclude that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator. Some jurisdictions have recognized a spoliation tort action, which allows the victim of destruction of evidence to file a separate tort action against a spoliator.
A duty to preserve begins upon the reasonable anticipation of litigation. During preservation, data identified as potentially relevant is placed in a legal hold. This ensures that data cannot be destroyed. Care is taken to ensure this process is defensible, while the end-goal is to reduce the possibility of data spoliation or destruction.
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