On June 3rd, 2011 Representative David Camp (R-MI), Chairman of the powerful and influential House Ways & Means Committee, asked in an official letter to Doug Shulman – the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service at the time – about (1) suspected targeting by the IRS of Conservative non-profit groups, intentionally delaying their applications for tax-exempt status, and (2) providing confidential tax information to Democrat members of Congress, activities that would be clearly illegal if uncovered. Lois Lerner, the Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit was listed as the primary suspect, but at least six others are also named.
Just 10 days later on June 13th, 2011 Lois Lerner reported to the IRS Information Technology Department that her hard drive has crashed and that she has lost all of her e-mail. Apparently the IRS IT department worked diligently to recover the lost data, but when that failed they violated Federal law and simply destroyed Lerner’s hard drive. Further the IRS had not been complying with their own regulations to maintain hard copies of IRS correspondence with external organizations. The IRS did not report any of this to Congress.
On May 22nd, 2013 Lerner appeared before Congress, but cited her Fifth Amendment rights protecting her from self-incrimination and refused to answer any questions. However she begins her testimony before Congress with a lengthy statement during which she proclaims her innocence.
At the time Law Professor Alan Dershowitz argued “You can’t simply make statements about a subject and then plead the Fifth Amendment in response to questions about the very same subject.” He asserts further, “Once you open the door to an area of inquiry, you have waived your Fifth Amendment right.” Several Republican members of Congress who are also lawyers, agree with Dershowitz and begin a legal review of her refusal to testify which has yet to be concluded, and would likely not be legally binding at any rate.
On February 10th, 2014, more than two and a half years after Camp first contacted the IRS, with the Congressional investigation in full swing for more than a year, the IRS Commissioner – now John Koskinen (who replaced Daniel Werfel in December if 2013, who replaced Steven Miller in May of 2013, who replaced Doug Shulman in November of 2012… are you still with me?) finally “realizes” that the e-mails of all seven IRS officials are missing… due to “crashed hard drives” which all crashed at the same time. However Koskinen did not inform Congress at that time.
On March 5th, 2014; Lerner (who by the way has since retired from the IRS with a full taxpayer-funded pension) again appeared before Congress, again plead the Fifth Amendment, and again refused to answer any questions. Two months later on May 7th, 2014 Congress held Lerner in Contempt of Congress, but while that may sound ominous it carries no real penalty without the support of the Democrat controlled Senate and Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.
On June 13th, 2014 IRS Commissioner Koskinen finally comes clean to Congress about Lerner’s e-mails (which he had become aware of more than four months earlier) but neglected to mention that the e-mails of the other six IRS officials under investigation are also missing. Congress only learned about those when they chanced to specifically ask if there are other missing e-mails, at which time Koskinen basically said, “Well, ya, actually, we’ve also lost the e-mails of everybody else you’re investigating too.” When members of Congress expressed outrage Koskinen became quite arrogant and expressed his own outrage that they didn’t believe him, saying that in his long career this is the first time that anyone has questioned his veracity.
So my fellow Americans the Obama administration and the Socialist, Totalitarian Left including the majority of the American media in this country is now asking us to believe:
1. That the hard drives of seven key IRS officials under investigation by Congress all crashed at the same time eliminating all of their e-mail from the very timeframe Congress is investigating,
2. That the IRS IT department was unable to recover any data from any of those seven hard drives,
3. That all seven hard drives were subsequently destroyed in direct violation of Federal law, and further, that the National Archives was not notified of the data loss which is another, separate violation of Federal law, and finally
4. That across all of the professionally managed, redundant, modern networked server clusters – reportedly in at least three different locations across the country – that manage IRS data there is not one single backup of even one of those IRS official’s “lost” e-mail files.
Over the last few days it has come to light that the IRS has a long-standing contract with a professional private sector IT company for data archival.
Eventually something is going to turn up, and when it does the American people will have their smoking gun. I say this with confidence for two reasons…
First, as an IT professional myself, I know all too well that the Internet is forever, and nothing ever truly leaves Cyberspace. The truth is out there in the 1s and 0s.
Second – and most important – the Obama administration would not be so confident to try to sell this bullshit to the American people if they had not already gone to great lengths to cover their tracks. Therefore many people know, and many acts of deletion were committed… and that means many mouths and server log entries to speak the truth.
Since I am confident that the Obama administration employs a great many IT guys a lot more competent than I it is probable that there were lengthy discussions about the various potential lines of technical investigation of this issue, weighed against possible election outcomes and things like the potential for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, for example. Since apparently the decision was made to proceed with this ridicules and risky cover-up, for the risk to be worth the reward the information in those e-mails must be highly incriminating, possibly pointing directly to senior Democrat Congressmen and perhaps even at Obama himself.
There will be no help forthcoming from the Department of Justice under Eric Holder, which includes the FBI and the US Marshal’s Service which would be two obvious organizations that might conduct the necessary investigation. Since the appointment of a Special Prosecutor who would have the authority to bypass Holder’s DoJ requires the approval of both Houses of Congress no such appointment will occur until we vote more Republicans into the Senate in November… and even then we will have to wait for them to be sworn in January of 2015. Of course if Conservatives sit on their asses at home and don’t vote because the candidate being offered to them “isn’t Conservative enough”, or some such bullshit… well then we may never know, and the guilty parties will slide.
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Update: I wrote this article on 22 June. I wake up this morning 23 June, Monday to learn that Fox News is reporting (ya, I know, they always lie) that Sonasoft – the private company that was backing up the IRS data – well it turns out that the IRS terminated their contract just weeks after Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed. Probably just a coincidence.
