An IRS Scandal Update

Remember Lois Lerner? You know, that former IRS Executive who appears to have overseen the IRS’s politically-biased treatment of nonprofits – the one where conservative groups faced roadblocks while liberal ones got priority consideration?

It’s been a while since TAH had an article about the IRS.  So here’s an update.

I’m not going to rehash past articles here.  If you need or would like a refresher, use the site’s search features with the search string “Lerner IRS email” (no quotes necessary).  There are a number of articles, so allow some time to read them; I’d recommend a 15-30 min.

1.  We now have a good idea of what happened to her hard drive. Yes, it indeed appears to have been destroyed – apparently on 16 April 2012.

2.  The drive appears to have quit working between 5PM and 7PM in Lerner’s office on Saturday, 11 June 2011.  Reputedly, a forensic technician examined it prior to destruction and found scoring on the top platter, likely due to an impact.  The laptop itself showed no sign of damage.  Data recovery was not attempted at the time.

3.  It turns out that the IRS also had another system available for internal communications – a system on which messages were NOT at the time archived, and which was known to have been available for use (and used by personnel from) by the IRS division Lerner headed.   That system was Microsoft’s Office Communications Server, or OCS – an instant messaging (chat) system.

4.  We also nave this quite interesting email from Lerner about email and instant messaging use.  From the link in item 3 above:

However, in an email uncovered by the Committee Lerner warns her colleagues about evading Congressional oversight:

“I was cautioning folks about email and how we have had several occasions where Congress has asked for emails and there has been an electronic search for responsive emails – so we need to be cautious about what we say in emails.”

Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded “Perfect.”

5.  Finally, documents from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, when the IRS looked for Lerner’s 24,000 “missing” emails from 2009-2011 . . . the initial search was quite obviously less than thorough and comprehensive.  Five out of six possible locations for the missing data apparently were not initially searched.

6. Oh, and GAO says that it’s possible the IRS may still be targeting conservative nonprofit groups.

. . .

Yeah, it looks to me like there might just be s a damn good reason Lerner “took the Fifth” when she was subpoenaed to testify before Congress about this.  Concerning the activities described and linked above . . . well, for some reason the terms “obstruction” and “stonewall” keep coming to mind.

But maybe that’s just me.

That’s the latest from the “Most Transparent Administration in History.”  Wonder what’s next?

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Crime