IRS Has “Lost” Emails from Six More Key IRS Figures
Haven’t you ever heard of multiple computer crashes?
The cynicism is overweening and could not exist in other than a leftist Administration, which can count on the media not to press the issue.
I want people to go to jail. Someone place a phone call to . . . Eric Holder.
Oh.
UPDATE BY JD: Previously I asked what the likelihood was that selected emails from a specific individual for a specific time frame could just disappear. Now I would ask what the likelihood of 6 people involved in the same investigation could have their emails disappear for the same period of time?
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: When this happens, remember where you saw it first:
Prediction: IRS will somehow blame "loss" of Lerner emails on government shutdown.
— Patterico (@Patterico) June 17, 2014
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:02 pmNext budget, the House eliminates one in ten positions at every GS level above whichever it is that processes returns and payments, cuts all bonuses, and defunds all conferences (that last is what Instapundit wants).
nk (dbc370) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:07 pmNow we know why Tiger Beat could tell O’Reilly that there wasn’t even a smidgen of corruption with such certainty.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:07 pmIt’s a start, nk.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/house-budget-punishes-irs-with-15-cut-halts-obamacare-enforcement/article/2549830
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:08 pmDisgusting beyond belief.
What kind of fools are we to have allowed things to get this bad? By “we,” I’m referring to all the Americans who idiotically accept people like Obama at face value and fall for the idea that, yes, because they’re beautiful liberals, full of compassion and pro-proletarian fairness, we should trust him, or at least give them wide latitude to be the piece of crud they actually are.
Look at how out of whack things are in Venezuela, where the populace there has given repeated hugs to Hugo Chavez and his successor, and all their sycophants.
I like to think the ideological idiocy of people in that part of South America is somehow much worse than what’s found in this part of North America. But then I see the mentality of so many folks throughout blue-state America, in dyed-in-the-wool-true-blue urban America, and I know that’s not necessarily true.
We’s can easily be as dumb here as they is there.
Mark (7b4a56) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:26 pmDidn’t you hear? The dog ate it!
The Emperor (e28272) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:26 pmHush, Chimperor. This is your guy doing this. You were a full-throated cheerleader for Teh One.
JD (08d44e) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:28 pm“full throated”. Lmao!
The Emperor (cd1ca5) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:31 pmI updated the post with what seems to be a very simple question.
JD (08d44e) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:32 pmI support him as long as he does the right thing for America.
The Emperor (4dcc08) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:35 pmJD, nobody, and I mean nobody — by which I mean, Harry Reid, Paul Krugman, and Matthew Yglesias — believes this.
Nobody.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:38 pmEveryone in the office, a little more likely than only one. Some small number greater than one, less likely.
htom (412a17) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:41 pmHeed the words of Auric Goldfinger:
John P. Squibob (4affc3) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:45 pmHtom – the likelihood of 6 or 7 out of around 106,000 employees, all of whom are subject to the same investigation?
JD (08d44e) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:49 pmUPDATE BY PATTERICO: When this happens, remember where you saw it first:
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:50 pmThat goes for the other six folks too.
“We could have had a better backup system, but due to the government shutdown…”
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:51 pmPatterico – I suspect at least 2 of those 3 will attempt to minimize this, play it off as a phony scandal, or find a way to blame it on Bush or the Tea Party by this time next week.
JD (08d44e) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:51 pmAnd yes, I know the timing makes no sense. Do you think they are letting logic get in the way at this point?
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:51 pmSuffice it to say, the IRS would not allow this level of record keeping were you to attempt this as a taxpayer.
JD (08d44e) — 6/17/2014 @ 7:54 pmJD, I’ve written my House Rep and asked him to sponsor legislation that any excuse the IRS uses to evade Congressional oversight shall be a legal defense for failing to meet an IRS auditor’s demands for documentation. Maybe we can get a petition going.
I especially look forward to being able to use the government shutdown and global warming excuses.
“The rising tides due to the melting polar ice cap ate my tax return.”
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:13 pmNow I would ask what the likelihood of 6 people involved in the same investigation could have their emails disappear for the same period of time?
It depends on the frequency of hard disk crashes (said to be 5% a year) the number of people in the risk pool, and the time frame over which the hard disks crashed.
This is 6 out of how many people, over how large a period of time?
The Freakonomics people could calculate the probability of these being a coincidence.
Sammy Finkelman (59be71) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:21 pm14. It’s 7 out of the total number whose e-mail was subpoeaned.
Sammy Finkelman (59be71) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:23 pm16. Not the government shutdown. But they could try blaming any cut in appropriations
Sammy Finkelman (59be71) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:25 pmin previous years.
At this point? Since when have they ever let logic or history get in the way of anything?
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/10/1963-moon-landing/
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:32 pmVery bad time for our nation, an embarrassment of riches for right-thinking bloggers.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:50 pmWait until we find out more about the other six folks involved.
So far, we know that one, Nikole Flax, was a frequent visitor to the White House.
Of course, former Commish Doug Shulman visited 112 times in just over 15 months, but can’t remember who he saw, what was discussed, or even why he went there on any of those occasions. Apparently the White House is much more impressive from the outside. Once in, it’s just another day at the office.
Estragon (ada867) — 6/17/2014 @ 9:18 pmI seem to recall that part of the American System of Governance (“A Republic, if you can keep it”) is that the People Are Sovereign. So, when the American People ‘shut down’, TFB!
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/17/2014 @ 9:23 pmWe need a line in ‘Vegas on what the over/under is on the IRS remaining in existence. It could be the most popular bet in town.
Estragon (ada867) — 6/17/2014 @ 9:18 pm
He was checking in on the Easter Egg Hunt(s) for his daughter – all 112 times.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/17/2014 @ 9:24 pmSteve57 #24 – the manger reference explains why Pres’ent Obama is the Cowabungler-in-Chief …
Alastor (2e7f9f) — 6/17/2014 @ 10:16 pmTry this on the next IRS audit:
“My computer crashed, and I recycle my backup files every six months. The documentation for my deductions was lost. Now you can stop your investigation.”
and
“Dude, that was two years ago!”
David (6f3506) — 6/17/2014 @ 11:10 pmYou know, I really don’t get Republicans. They don’t plan well, and certainly don’t understand how to play the Washington game.
Smart Republicans would, once they control government again, remember that the bureaucracy is almost 100% composed of Democrats. And then using that knowledge, smart Republicans would pass a series of laws that would criminalize use of non-Congressional email systems, and would require that backups of all US government email systems would be made to servers under the Control of the United States Congress, for their perusal at any time, for any reason, in order to perform their Constitutional oversight responsibilities.
It’s just a shame that they didn’t do this years ago, when Republicans controlled all 3 branches of government.
And what’s really a shame is that there aren’t any smart Republicans.
justsayin (84ecc5) — 6/18/2014 @ 3:07 amHow much do you want to bet that there were Republicans who asked the IRS to investigate liberal group’s political activity compromising their tax exempt status? Remember ACORN? That is why we’ll never get to the truth.
Hadoop (f7d5ba) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:50 amJustsayin – your gift of foresight is staggering
JD (010bc7) — 6/18/2014 @ 5:20 am#31 justsayin, the real shame isn’t stupid Republicans, although there are plenty of ’em, cowardly ones too, the real shame is the apparent complete absence of honest Democrats, or at least ones who can face up to the question: How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?
We have an administration arrogantly taking unilateral actions that are more characteristic of a dictatorship than of a constitutional republic. Blatant lawlessness, using federal agencies to target political opponents, subverting elections, refusals to deliver subpoenaed records, abandoning our fighting men under enemy fire, wrecking the economy with insane over-regulation, and the list goes on and on.
If the GOP wants to lead the nation, now is the time to start proving they’re up to the task. We need competent leadership and it’s clear Barack Obama has failed the nation. He must go.
ropelight (24a69e) — 6/18/2014 @ 5:21 am“Justsayin” – pick a name.
JD (08d44e) — 6/18/2014 @ 5:43 amPatterico,
The administration could blame the data losses on space aliens and the MSM wouldn’t blink.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/18/2014 @ 7:29 amThe space alien excuse is more probable than the current bs.
Hadoop (7fc17e) — 6/18/2014 @ 7:31 amThe space alien excuse is more probable than the current bs.
You have me there.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/18/2014 @ 8:59 amThere is some bs about not having realized that ALL of Lois Lerner’s e-mails had been subpoeaned until it was reiterated this March, after Congress had received some e-mail between Lois Lerner and the Department of Justice that they hadn’t receoved from the IRS.
Sammy Finkelman (95e288) — 6/18/2014 @ 9:02 amNote to foobarbaz (#15 in the wshington Redskins trademark thread)
The IRS doesn’t say it lost anything in a system crash, just that Lois Lerner and anyone else was responsible for determining what e-mails had to be kept, and their server could only hold so much, and their daily backups were recycled after six months, and she might have put old emails on her hard disk, but her hard disk crashed sometime shortly before 10:19 am Monday morning, June 13, 2011.
(probably over the weekend when very few people were in the office.)
Sammy Finkelman (95e288) — 6/18/2014 @ 9:18 amIt seems to be more likely that an entire office (whether that’s 1 or 7 or a hundred) would somehow “lose” their email than one or a dozen of the hundred. Drive goes, all the mail’s gone (if itwas not correctly saved before being sent to the office’s drive. A drive failure will not take one person’s email, it will take everyone’s, or semi-random parts of everyone’s. The question to ask those who claim it’s a crash is “who else lost all of their email in that timeframe?”
htom (412a17) — 6/18/2014 @ 11:32 am41. htom (412a17) — 6/18/2014 @ 11:32 am
It seems to be more likely that an entire office (whether that’s 1 or 7 or a hundred)
While I haven’t read any details, I don’t think all 7 worked in the same office, or that it happened at the same time.
would somehow “lose” their email than one or a dozen of the hundred. Drive goes, all the mail’s gone (if it was not correctly saved before being sent to the office’s drive.
No, the e-mail sent to the server was there. Her hard disk crashed sometime before 10:19 am Monday. June 13, 2011 (when a message was sent out to a doozen people saying that her hard disk crashed and she will be without email.)
But the period of time for which almost all her e-mail is gone is prior to about April, 2011.
The e-mail prior to April, 2011, had evidently been deleted from the server by Lois Lerner, and any early backups of the server were overwritten.
It is not being explained why any of it survived – perhaps she kept some older email there, or had printed it out.
A drive failure will not take one person’s email, it will take everyone’s, or semi-random parts of everyone’s.
No, no, it was her own hard disk on her very own office PC that crashed.
Her own hard disk was where she might have put earlier archives of e-mail. Actually, she may very well have not archived the e-mail that had exceeded the storage capacity of 150 megabytes they gave her, but just deleted most of it from the server, and the last time maybe she did that was in April. In July, 2011, the storage allocation per employee was raised from 150 megabytes worth of e-mail to 500 meabytes, with a warning kicking in at 475 megabytes.
Her hard drive was mentioned because e-mail could have been there. Not necessarly that there is any reason to suppose that it was. Maybe other employees did that.
The question to ask those who claim it’s a crash is “who else lost all of their email in that timeframe?”
Yes, a good question. Did this all this happen at about the same time frame?
Sammy Finkelman (95e288) — 6/18/2014 @ 3:21 pmNo, Sammy, that is nowhere near the truth.
http://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-015-006.html
Emails are official documents. The IRS has a statutory responsibility to maintain a system that automatically retain those beyond the six months some IRS doofus wants you to believe they keep teh magnetic tapes.
The only thing the left up to the individual employee was which of these official documents constituted a federal record. Then they had to treat those federal records differently than a mere official document.
Got it, Sammy? It wasn’t up to the individual employee to decide what emails to keep. The IRS had to keep records of all of them. It was up to the individual employee to decide which emails to keep as a federal record.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:16 pmLerner and the other la-la-la-Losers lost emails have not been reported by anyone other than Fox News. Effing brain dead, colluding media.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:33 pmSammy still isn’t sold on John Wilkes Booth as the single assassin.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:33 pmHold the Presses…..
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:44 pmSammy just admitted that he doesn’t read details.
So much for skimming the headlines of the NYT, huh Sammy.
45. Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:33 pm
Sammy still isn’t sold on John Wilkes Booth as the single assassin.
Don’t you know he wasn’t? He was the only one who shot at Lincoln, and the organizer of the conspiracy, but there were attempts on two or three other people.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/lincolnconspiracy.html
One sub page:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/lincolnaccount.html
Also:
There was a conspiracy, but prosecutors tried to make the conspiracy out to be too big, and later on some people tried to claim that Edward Stanton had been the chief conspirator.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/19/2014 @ 4:35 pmZOMFGWTF?!
JD (d11cfd) — 6/19/2014 @ 4:38 pmSteve57 (d38ceb) — 6/18/2014 @ 4:16 pm
Got it, Sammy? It wasn’t up to the individual employee to decide what emails to keep. The IRS had to keep records of all of them. It was up to the individual employee to decide which emails to keep as a federal record
If it not a federal record, it doesn’t need to be preserved.
Emails are official documents. The IRS has a statutory responsibility to maintain a system that automatically retain those
Where do you see that?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/19/2014 @ 4:40 pmSammy,
I honestly don’t think you understand a lot of words as the rest of us do.
I very specifically used the phrase “single assassin” in describing the murderer of President Lincoln, yet you claim that because there were attempts on other Cabinet members by other conspirators, that means there was more than one assassin who killed Lincoln.
Good Allah.
That’s like if I say that player X scored the winning goal in a World Cup match, then you turn around and tell me there were other teammates of his who attempted to score also.
Elephant Stone (5c2aa0) — 6/19/2014 @ 4:44 pmNo. If it’s not a federal record it doesn’t need to be printed, but it still needs to be preserved on the server.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/19/2014 @ 4:47 pmIf it is related to the functioning of the IRS it is a federal record. There is very little, if any, discretion.
JD (d11cfd) — 6/19/2014 @ 5:40 pm