IRS Scandal explodes. "no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution."

[Knowing]

I believe I have read that Mr. Camp asked Ms. Lerner if there was something going on. Her reply was probably not actually an answer, but then there was a meeting in June when Ms. Lerner was informed that there was specific targeting going on. I haven't found a date for that meeting. However, the fact that the cascading computer crashes began the exact same month Lerner was confirmed by third parties to know that this was taking place simply makes a perfect storm of computer crash convenience.

The sudden destruction of Lerner’s archived email seems to have occurred on or around June 13, 2011, just 10 days after Rep. David Camp sent a letter to then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman asking whether conservative groups were being targeted.

Link

Found the date of the meeting

Lerner was informed at a meeting on June 29, 2011, that groups were being targeted, according to a draft of the report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

Link

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they found a google query for "please serve me up a tasty virus" in her browsing history.

 

[JockoJohnson]

How convenient then that once the investigators started sniffing around Lerner and started getting closer, the emails magically vanished and got destroyed. As I asked before, how exactly do you investigate what's going on at the IRS when the IRS simply refuses to cooperate, destroys critical evidence in the case, and the DOJ refuses to do anything about it because they're on the same team??

If they refuse and can seemingly get away with it, take it to the media. If the media doesn't do anything about it, then those on the left can STFU about media bias. This is NOT a left or right issue if the IRS can get away with what they are doing. It is an us vs. the tyrannical gov't (and those that suck the gov't cocks).

 

[Jhhnn]

She waived the 5th amendment with regard to the subject matter of those affirmative statements of fact and is now subject to cross-examination.

Merely convenient opinion unsubstantiated by precedent.

And utterly immaterial given the DoJ stance on it.

It would be impossible for her to avoid prosecution for contempt in refusing to testify under a grant of immunity & impossible for the DoJ to see it any other way.

So, uhh, what are they waiting for? They're waiting until they can wring out the last little bit of muck they can conjure up, apparently. They have no intention of determining what really transpired, or did they ever. It's the same with all of Issa's pandering & mudslinging carried out under the cover of "investigation".

 

[werepossum]

Merely convenient opinion unsubstantiated by precedent.

And utterly immaterial given the DoJ stance on it.

It would be impossible for her to avoid prosecution for contempt in refusing to testify under a grant of immunity & impossible for the DoJ to see it any other way.

So, uhh, what are they waiting for? They're waiting until they can wring out the last little bit of muck they can conjure up, apparently. They have no intention of determining what really transpired, or did they ever. It's the same with all of Issa's pandering & mudslinging carried out under the cover of "investigation".

lol Kind of like it would be impossible for the IRS to ignore every federal statute on email retention, eh?

 

[Jhhnn]

Congress plans to cut the IRS budget by 15%. They'll just have to keep chipping away at their budget until they no longer have the means to destroy hard drives. The power of the purse seems to be the only avenue left.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/house...t-halts-obamacare-enforcement/article/2549830

Regardless, if Lerner followed IRS procedures, she made hard copies of her emails. She's going to come under fire one way or another.

Back at the beginning, the IRS offered that employees buried under a mountain of tax exempt status claims took an improper shortcut, created bolo lists, trying to do their jobs. That's entirely plausible.

So now congressional repubs want to cut their funding to make doing their jobs even harder... Perhaps there's some sort of hidden agenda here? Couldn't be!

 

[Jhhnn]

lol Kind of like it would be impossible for the IRS to ignore every federal statute on email retention, eh?

Feel the need to duh-vert? Got some bone to growl over?

What else do congressional repubs intend to do to actually investigate, anyway?

Funny how all the original issues get cast aside in the rush to get that bone, huh?

 

[werepossum]

Feel the need to duh-vert? Got some bone to growl over?

What else do congressional repubs intend to do to actually investigate, anyway?

Funny how all the original issues get cast aside in the rush to get that bone, huh?

Yeah, I'm diverting a thread on the IRS being used as the Democrat Party's political muscle by pointing out that the IRS is blatantly disregarding existing laws and destroying evidence. Dumb ass.

 

[Jhhnn]

Yeah, I'm diverting a thread on the IRS being used as the Democrat Party's political muscle by pointing out that the IRS is blatantly disregarding existing laws and destroying evidence. Dumb ass.

Oh- I thought it was about improperly targeting fringe-whack teatard groups seeking tax exempt status. What are Repubs doing to actually advance that investigation, anyway?

Crying over spilled milk? Misrepresenting federal email retention policies? Claiming that crashed hard drives are always 100% recoverable?

Desperately avoiding the one line of actual inquiry they still have, forcing Lerner's testimony through a grant of immunity?

Yeh, that.

It's always important to shift the focus of questions to the unsolveable in order to pump up a good conspiracy theory, huh? It's a great way to avoid questions that could be answered, keep right on pandering to the feeble minded partisans in the Repub base. Works every time.

 

[PokerGuy]

If they refuse and can seemingly get away with it, take it to the media.

You can see in this very thread how most lefties are perfectly fine with the IRS targeting people based on political leanings, as long as the targets are conservatives. What makes you think the media -- the vast majority of which are by their own admission liberals and democrats -- will do anything other than what they've done thusfar? (ie, nothing, make the story disappear).

If the media doesn't do anything about it, then those on the left can STFU about media bias.

The media hasn't (and won't) do anything about it, because the "other team" was the target, and the lefties will still deny any media bias. Nothing new there.

This is NOT a left or right issue if the IRS can get away with what they are doing.

I agree 100%, it shouldn't be a left vs right issue, but the left has successfully made it into one, thus rallying their base to support something that everyone on the left and right should be 100% against.

 

[fskimospy]

You can see in this very thread how most lefties are perfectly fine with the IRS targeting people based on political leanings, as long as the targets are conservatives. What makes you think the media -- the vast majority of which are by their own admission liberals and democrats -- will do anything other than what they've done thusfar? (ie, nothing, make the story disappear).

The media hasn't (and won't) do anything about it, because the "other team" was the target, and the lefties will still deny any media bias. Nothing new there.

I agree 100%, it shouldn't be a left vs right issue, but the left has successfully made it into one, thus rallying their base to support something that everyone on the left and right should be 100% against.

"Media bias" to conservatives being of course "reporting repeatedly on a subject but not in a way sufficiently deferential to whatever position conservatives want".

 

[PokerGuy]

If the media doesn't do anything about it, then those on the left can STFU about media bias.

You can see in this very thread how most lefties are perfectly fine with the IRS targeting people based on political leanings, as long as the targets are conservatives. What makes you think the media -- the vast majority of which are by their own admission liberals and democrats -- will do anything other than what they've done thusfar? (ie, nothing, make the story disappear).

Exhibit A:

"Media bias" to conservatives being of course "reporting repeatedly on a subject but not in a way sufficiently deferential to whatever position conservatives want".

Thanks for proving my point to Jocko -- the media will do nothing with this case because most on the left (like eskimo) are perfectly fine as long as it's the other side getting targeted, it's all a big "made up scandal".

 

[Attic]

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The IRS scandal is theater at this point, pretty good one at that.

The "lost" emails and multiple hard drive "crashes" of folks involved in the scandal during the limited time frame of the investigation dates was a bit overly dramatic if not predictable.

So, good show. Can't wait to see if this is the curtain call or their will be an encore.


Looks like Iraq 3 is next in queue.

 

[Jhhnn]

You can see in this very thread how most lefties are perfectly fine with the IRS targeting people based on political leanings, as long as the targets are conservatives. What makes you think the media -- the vast majority of which are by their own admission liberals and democrats -- will do anything other than what they've done thusfar? (ie, nothing, make the story disappear).



The media hasn't (and won't) do anything about it, because the "other team" was the target, and the lefties will still deny any media bias. Nothing new there.



I agree 100%, it shouldn't be a left vs right issue, but the left has successfully made it into one, thus rallying their base to support something that everyone on the left and right should be 100% against.

The layered false premises and false attributions in that are quite remarkable, forming an intellectual safety net of Denial.

If this whole imbroglio was not the result of IRS employees taking improper shortcuts to do their jobs, then I want the perps to be exposed & penalized. I also expect that even low level players would attempt to cover their tracks to avoid discipline as publicity examples or scapegoats. I also expect less than 100% competency even from honest people.

I expect investigators to use all the legal tools at their disposal to pursue the truth, whatever it is, not exploit the situation for partisan political gain. Repubs satisfy neither of those criteria and are therefore not honest investigators at all but rather muck raking propagandists.

Anything that supports the ongoing conspiracy theory is plastered all over the so-called "Liberal Media" & embellished in grand fashion, always emphasizing the unknowable, taking every muddy dead end side road available to stay off the highway, then pretending to be lost in the woods when the GPS on the dash says otherwise.

Only an overwhelming desire to Believe combined with mindless confirmation bias allows them any credibility at all.

 

[fskimospy]

Exhibit A:

Thanks for proving my point to Jocko -- the media will do nothing with this case because most on the left (like eskimo) are perfectly fine as long as it's the other side getting targeted, it's all a big "made up scandal".

Uhmm, you realize you're in fact proving MY point, right? The media has reported on this tons, you just think that because they don't parrot what you read on ultra right wing sites that they are biased. Maybe you should rethink what bias is. (hint: it's not anything you don't like)

 

[First]

It doesn't particularly matter that Lerner's hard drive with emails crashed given that 24K+ of Lerner's sent emails were recovered during the timeframe in question because people receiving her emails have those records intact. Given that all her emails have to go somewhere, seemingly the only potential for an actual net loss in Lerner's emails is on email threads strictly between Lerner and other IRS employee's whose emails have also been lost. And that seems particularly implausible, that (apparently) 6 other IRS employees have lost emails due to HDD "crashes", something I can't imagine happening unless you're talking about a flood, fire or other disaster. Hard drives simply don't crash that often.

The other perhaps more scandalous issue is the backwards nature of federal IT, at least specifically at the IRS. Email retention and archiving has been so cheap for years now that it's sad they haven't upgraded. Btw, Repubs just cut the budget request for the IRS by $1.5B, $341M below current levels, for fiscal year 2015. lulz

 

[xBiffx]

It doesn't particularly matter that Lerner's hard drive with emails crashed given that 24K+ of Lerner's sent emails were recovered during the timeframe in question because people receiving her emails have those records intact. Given that all her emails have to go somewhere, seemingly the only potential for an actual net loss in Lerner's emails is on email threads strictly between Lerner and other IRS employee's whose emails have also been lost. And that seems particularly implausible, that (apparently) 6 other IRS employees have lost emails due to HDD "crashes", something I can't imagine happening unless you're talking about a flood, fire or other disaster. Hard drives simply don't crash that often.

On top of all that, even if they "crashed" that doesn't automatically mean the data is 100% unrecoverable in all six cases.

I'm sure we've all dealt with a failed or failing drive and the "fun" of tying to salvage what data we can from it. There are ways to recover everything from a failed drive in many cases. The IRS would have us believe each and every incident was completely catastrophic and unrecoverable. That is totally unbelievable at this point unless, as you stated, there was some sort of disaster.

 

[PokerGuy]

It doesn't particularly matter that Lerner's hard drive with emails crashed given that 24K+ of Lerner's sent emails were recovered during the timeframe in question because people receiving her emails have those records intact. Given that all her emails have to go somewhere, seemingly the only potential for an actual net loss in Lerner's emails is on email threads strictly between Lerner and other IRS employee's whose emails have also been lost.

Perhaps you're forgetting a critical detail: can you explain exactly how anyone would know who Lerner sent emails to (or received them from) now that all her emails in/out of the IRS were conveniently destroyed once investigators began snooping around? How do you know who to go ask or where to look?

So basically, with the evidence destroyed, there's pretty much now way we're going to get the details of just how far up the chain it went and who was involved. We could still get additional details from inside the IRS, but since they haven't been cooperating since the beginning, I'm pretty sure that's not going anywhere either.

Hard drives simply don't crash that often.

They do when you don't want anyone snooping around looking at the information on them........

Btw, Repubs just cut the budget request for the IRS by $1.5B, $341M below current levels, for fiscal year 2015. lulz

Since we can't make them accountable and can't get any oversight into their activities, the only alternative left would seem to be reduce their funding each year by as much as possible until they start to cooperate.

 

[Jhhnn]

It doesn't particularly matter that Lerner's hard drive with emails crashed given that 24K+ of Lerner's sent emails were recovered during the timeframe in question because people receiving her emails have those records intact. Given that all her emails have to go somewhere, seemingly the only potential for an actual net loss in Lerner's emails is on email threads strictly between Lerner and other IRS employee's whose emails have also been lost. And that seems particularly implausible, that (apparently) 6 other IRS employees have lost emails due to HDD "crashes", something I can't imagine happening unless you're talking about a flood, fire or other disaster. Hard drives simply don't crash that often.

The other perhaps more scandalous issue is the backwards nature of federal IT, at least specifically at the IRS. Email retention and archiving has been so cheap for years now that it's sad they haven't upgraded. Btw, Repubs just cut the budget request for the IRS by $1.5B, $341M below current levels, for fiscal year 2015. lulz

That's right- shift the focus away from the initial inquiry, embellish the facts, take off down that road you know is a dead end splashing as much mud as possible in the process.

Now it's not about actually going anywhere- it's about the glorious mud & the opportunity to splash it everywhere.

 

[PokerGuy]

Uhmm, you realize you're in fact proving MY point, right? The media has reported on this tons

They've barely reported anything at all, and when they have, they've reported on it from the angle that it must just be a repub witch hunt going after the good guys again. Of course, you'd have to remove the party blinders to see that

, you just think that because they don't parrot what you read on ultra right wing sites that they are biased. Maybe you should rethink what bias is. (hint: it's not anything you don't like)

Ultra right wing sites? Like MSNBC? Like BBC? Like NPR? Newsflash, I prefer to get my news from lots of places, none of them even remotely close to "right wing".

 

[PokerGuy]

Now it's not about actually going anywhere- it's about the glorious mud & the opportunity to splash it everywhere.

Indeed it isn't going to go anywhere. The IRS is going to continue to not cooperate, the evidence has been destroyed (oops, sorry!), and the DOJ is obviously not going to lift a finger in this case. I'm sure that makes lots of lefties smile with glee, but be careful what you wish for, an unaccountable agency with tremendous power isn't always going to be targeting those you don't like.....

 

[spidey07]

Shame for the liberal to be defending this behavior, really shows off the mind of the liberal on full display and just how much of an enemy to this nation they are.

The investigation and e-mails need to be discovered to find out the cause of the illegal targeting. Who ordered it, who made it happen and who in this criminal administration instructed the IRS to use this illegal tactic. What's even worse is this admin expects us to believe this shit.

 

[fskimospy]

They've barely reported anything at all, and when they have, they've reported on it from the angle that it must just be a repub witch hunt going after the good guys again. Of course, you'd have to remove the party blinders to see that

Again, you live in a fantasyland.

CNN from today:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/20/politics/irs-emails/

NY Times from today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/us/koskinen-testifies-before-house-committee-in-tax-case.html

NBC News from today:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/irs-says-it-lost-lois-lerner-emails-tea-party-probe-n131101

NPR from 3 days ago:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/06/17/322907869/lost-irs-emails-spark-republican-ire

These are all very reasonable and balanced reports. Funny how in about 30 seconds I found four separate pieces (not simply 4 printings of an AP report) on a topic you say they have barely covered at all, 3 printed today alone.

This is about the 100th time on here where conservatives show their cultural dedication to victimhood, declaring a media conspiracy against them. When you're shown to be wrong yet again you'll just forget this ever happened and continue to cling to the idea that you're a victim.

Ultra right wing sites? Like MSNBC? Like BBC? Like NPR? Newsflash, I prefer to get my news from lots of places, none of them even remotely close to "right wing".

You aren't fooling anyone. How come I can find reports from one of your dedicated news sources in 30 seconds that you apparently believe don't exist? You should read them more closely, I guess.

 

[Jhhnn]

Indeed it isn't going to go anywhere. The IRS is going to continue to not cooperate, the evidence has been destroyed (oops, sorry!), and the DOJ is obviously not going to lift a finger in this case. I'm sure that makes lots of lefties smile with glee, but be careful what you wish for, an unaccountable agency with tremendous power isn't always going to be targeting those you don't like.....

And Repubs will continue to pointedly ignore the fact that they can force Lerner's testimony with a grant of immunity.

Name another viable path of inquiry if you would, good sir. Please. I'd like to see this investigation wrapped up & justice served as soon as reasonably possible, not dragged out like the notorious Whitewater probe. Use the tools you have. Get on with it.

Not a fucking chance, huh?

 

[spidey07]

And Repubs will continue to pointedly ignore the fact that they can force Lerner's testimony with a grant of immunity.

Name another viable path of inquiry if you would, good sir. Please. I'd like to see this investigation wrapped up & justice served as soon as reasonably possible, not dragged out like the notorious Whitewater probe. Use the tools you have. Get on with it.

Not a fucking chance, huh?

Why would they do that? The number 1 goal of any true Republican is to make this administration look as bad as possible and prevent everything he tries to do. That's why we voted for them, that's their job.

 

[Bowfinger]

Why would they do that? The number 1 goal of any true Republican is to make this administration look as bad as possible and prevent everything he tries to do. That's why we voted for them, that's their job.

How about it, righties? Does this slimeball speak for you? Is your focus attacking the left at all costs, or is it getting to the truth?

Regardless of your answer, partisan turds like Spidey are all too common in American politics (e.g., Darrell Issa). They put party above all else, and they don't care about truth or integrity or right and wrong. They don't even care about America, for that matter. It's all about their pathetic need to cut another notch for their party. They are destroying America with their hate-mongering and divisiveness.